Digital wallet, how to load your driving licence and health card onto your mobile phone

Operation It Wallet accomplished. Since Wednesday 4 December it is possible to activate digital documents on the IO app. The new functionality allows you to add the digital version of your personal documents to your wallet in the app: driving licence, health card and European disability card.

Activation requires re-authentication in the app with Spid or Cie to ensure that documents are with certainty associated with the user's identity. On Wednesday 4 December, on the first day of implementation, some inefficiencies and delays were reported, due to the peak of requests generated by the launch of the service. But already after a few hours, the reports had subsided.

This is how the 'digital revolution' begins in Italy with the first phase of It-Wallet, the digital wallet that is now available to all citizens over the age of 18, totalling some 43 million people. Activating it is simple. Just update or install the IO app on your smartphone and log in with your digital identity with Cie and Spid, to use the new 'Documents on IO' feature by uploading, on a voluntary and free basis, the digital version of your documents in the 'Wallet' section. The documents will be able to be used live, instead of physical fees.

The digital wallet was released in stages: as of 23 October the service was made available to 50 thousand citizens, from 6 November to 250 thousand citizens, from 30 November to 1 million, and from 4 December to all Italians. Digital identity is in fact a tool that, on the recommendation of the EU Commission, other governments are also working on, and the ultimate goal is to have a European digital identity wallet (Eudi Wallet). There will also be wallets issued by private entities (those of Apple and Google are already known), but what must be avoided is that each one is limited to its own services.

Digital versions of documents are authentic copies of physical documents within a legally compliant digital application. However, the physical cards are not being retired: the It Wallet is not mandatory and for now the three digital documents can only be used for offline interactions: the driving licence can only be used in Italy to prove that one is qualified to drive in the event of police checks; the health card - European Health Insurance Card will allow access to services provided by the National Health Service; the European Disability Card will have the same uses as the physical document version.