Paper driver’s licenses are soon to go digital, too

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The digital driver’s license has been activated more than 300,000 times in Austria. Soon, it will no longer necessarily require a check card.

State Secretary for Digitalization Florian Tursky and Finance Minister Magnus Brunner cited new data on digitalization in Austria on Sunday. So far, more than one million people have been identified as using ID Austria, and the digital driver’s license has now been activated 302,300 times. Now there is to be another innovation: Currently, the digital driver’s license can only be started by people with a check card driver’s license. Still, the Digital Austria Act passed by the federal government will also make this possible with pink paper licenses.

Digital driver’s license to be valid EU-wide in the future

According to the politicians, the digital driver’s license can be used “basically everywhere, just like the check-card driver’s license, if it can also be checked digitally by the other party.” In addition to traffic control, the digital driver’s license is recognized, for example, as proof of age in all REWE stores and as identification in all A1 stores, they say. However, to use the digital driver’s license, switching from the previous cell phone signature to ID Austria is necessary.

The digital driver’s license is the first of two digital ID cards in Austria. At the end of March, Education Minister Martin Polaschek and State Secretary Florian Tursky presented the digital student ID card. “300,000 activated digital driver’s licenses show Austrians are using the new digital IDs,” Brunner said. The ID Austria “is already used by more than one million Austrians and is the key to using your smartphone to complete official business online,” he said.

It also represents “the basis for all future digital IDs, such as proof of identity and age for people without a driver’s license,” Brunner said. “A large number of driver’s licenses in Austria are still old paper driver’s licenses. In the Digital Austria Act, we stated that we wanted to make digital IDs available to everyone. That’s why we agreed in the Digital Austria Act to make digital driver’s licenses available to all holders of paper driver’s licenses in the future by linking them to the identity register,” Tursky said.