The passportthe real one, remains in a drawer. It comes on your smartphone a digital copy which is enough to demonstrate who we are, and in many cases not even that: it is enough to prove that we are of age without revealing our name, address or date of birth. It is the promise ofPass IDthe feature that Google announced for Google Wallet and which, according to initial indications, will land in Italy by the summer. The announcement came on June 4th from Amsterdam, during Money 20/20 Europe, one of the main showcases of the payments sector. In the official press release, Google talks about an extension of digital IDs to “some European Union member states” by the summer, without specifying which ones. The list of countries (Italy, Spain, France, Ireland and Estonia) was indicated by Biometric Update, a newspaper specializing in digital identity, which cites reading the passport as a method for generating the document.
How it is activated
The procedure, identical to the one already tested in the United States and the United Kingdom, requires an Android smartphone with active NFC and is completed in three steps: first you need to photograph the passport data pageThen place the document on the phone so that it can read the biometric chip and finally record a short selfie video for facial recognition. Once verification is complete, the digital document is encrypted and saved in the device’s protected memory. Google has clarified that the information does not end up in the cloud or pass through its servers, remaining on the phone.
The point: show less
The news that matters is not digitalization itself, but the so-called selective verification. Today, to prove that you are of the required age on a site that sells adult content or on a platform with access limits, you often end up showing an entire document, containing data that has nothing to do with the question asked. The Pass ID overturns the logic, because communicates only the necessary information (yes, I’m over eighteen) and keeps the rest under wraps. The same principle will apply to authenticate on e-commerce services, activate a SIM or complete the checks required by banks and financial operators. On the age verification front, Google also announced a partnership with Sparkasse, a German banking group with over fifty million customers, the first national partner in Europe for registry credentials.
What it is not: The IT wallet is something else
Here we need to clear up a foreseeable misunderstanding. Google ID Pass is not the state’s digital walletthat is the IT-Wallet, accessible via the IO app and active for all citizens from December 2024, which allows you to digitize driving licence, health card and European Disability Card with full legal value. The difference is abysmal, given that the IT-Wallet documents are valid for in-person checks (such as at a checkpoint, or in a pharmacy) while the Google version was created for the online world and replaces neither the physical document nor the public system. Then there is the European framework, destined to redesign everything. EU Regulation 2024/1183, known as eIDAS 2.0 and entered into force on May 20, 2024, requires a each Member State to offer an interoperable digital identity wallet (the EUDI Wallet) by the end of 2026. The Italian IT-Wallet is the national piece of that mosaic, and will have to communicate with the wallets of the other twenty-six countries.
An open question remains, the most interesting: How will the ID Pass of a private company like Google fit into the European public infrastructure that is about to be born? The answer will depend on Brussels’ choices and the willingness of private platforms to adopt its standards. For now the passport fits into the phone, what Europe will do with it will be seen in the coming months.
