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If you’ve ever got yourself into a panic thinking you’ve forgotten your passport on the way to the airport, then take a deep breath and read this.
De La Rue, the world’s biggest passport producer which also prints British banknotes, is working on technology to store passports on smartphones.
The e-passports could be used in a similar way to mobile boarding cards which can be stored on a smartphone without the need for the printed paper version.
And since modern passports already have chips in them that digitally compare the carrier’s face to the one stored in the passport, a chip could be embedded inside a smartphone to continue to use this technology, instead of just representing a document on a screen.
However the security concerns – including the potential for forgery, issues at international barriers and the possibility of losing the mobile phone (let’s be honest, we’ve all been there) – leave some pretty big challenges up ahead.
De La Rue chief executive Martin Sutherland told The Times that it was already testing the concept of paperless passports.
