Fintech, mDLs and digital ID could be Apple’s ticket to Microsoft-like universality

by James · September 14, 2022

A fintech trade journal has connected some dots and several patents to define where Apple stands with US digital ID documents. The new picture seems to indicate that it will not go the way of the low-volume, high-cost, higher-margin hardware business.

Decades ago, Microsoft realized that “good enough for government work” is an excellent business model. Now it’s Apple poking its nose under the federal government’s budget tent.

That might be a bit unfair. Microsoft has monumentally dominated government purchases of hardware and software forever. If Macs were put on every desk at the federal government’s magazine, Public Roads, sales would move the needle for Apple.

And, as the Apple article in Fintech Business Weekly notes, the California-based consumer electronics company has some interesting and even surprising contracts. Laptops were used to plan bombings in Iraq. Admittedly, there must be a better example of Apple’s government work. And that’s it.

Apple executives in the 2010s noted the growing acceptance of digital documents and contactless transactions. Their most visible response has been working with states and the Department of Homeland Security.

Programmers are creating the basis for mobile driver’s licenses from all 50 states that can also be used to get through airport security.

According to reports from Fintech Business Weekly, Apple is working with DHS to evaluate digital ID technology. If the research eventually results in deliveries, look for systems that might be a little easier to use in a busy airport, and for those systems to give Apple an early foothold in the promising public mobile and security technology arena.

Google has by no means given up on this fight. And there are non-Big Tech players involved, like GET Group North America.

But Apple entered into a collaborative research and development agreement with the Transportation Security Administration to work on mDLs in 2019, Fintech Business Weekly has discovered. The results of this collaboration can be used in assessments of which mDLs TSA accepts.

The deal gave Apple the first crack at piloting mDL use at airports, and a TSA patent has since been transferred to the company, as 9To5Mac points out.

Outside of airports, Apple’s work with mobile driver’s licenses is early in the industry, and it could be big. Apple software could become the universal interface with the bureaucracy the way Windows became the government’s back-office computing.

And it will play an increasing role in knowing your customer as well.

Dominance by Apple in KYC, mobile driver’s licenses and DHS identity verification is far from guaranteed. However, it is one of the richest companies in the world because of its marketing acumen and knowing when to enter a new device market.

There may be little to market here for Apple, but shareholders must salivate at the thought of owning part of a bullet maker and an almost universal presence in people’s minds.