Sweden
Smitten, a Nordic dating app with strong presence in Sweden, has become the first dating platform globally to integrate national electronic ID-based identity verification. The integration uses Swedish BankID, delivered in collaboration with digital identity solutions provider Signicat.
By adopting national eIDs, users can verify their identity and age through BankID and then choose to interact only with verified profiles. Sweden has some of Europe’s highest eID penetration and usage rates.
Signicat said it enables Smitten to expand this increased level of trust to additional markets, with plans for Iceland already in progress.
Global
GBG is launching a solution that allows businesses to seamlessly accept verified Digital IDs from around the world during online onboarding. Through a single, secure connection, organisations can verify users using a range of Digital IDs including government-issued eIDs, mobile driver’s licences (mDLs), and BankIDs.
Available as a module within GBG Go, the company’s adaptive identity platform, the solution provides businesses with aggregated access to trusted Digital ID networks. By accepting a variety of private and public reusable credentials, GBG said it helps businesses keep up with user adoption and verify customers across multiple markets, without vendor lock-in.
British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies
British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies will be offered opportunities and support to adopt the UK’s new digital identity system, but it will up to local legislators to decide the extent to which to do so, according to PublicTechnology.
Tory MP Sir John Hayes has questioned whether the UK’s Crown Dependencies – Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man – “will be included in the proposed digital ID card scheme”.
In response, digital government minister Ian Murray said that holders of all passports issued in the three dependencies “are full British citizens and so will be eligible for the new digital ID”.
He added: “As a self-governing jurisdiction, it will be for the [dependencies] to determine whether any future legislation on digital ID should be extended to their jurisdiction.”
While British Overseas Territories (BOTs) – a 14-strong group which includes the likes of the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Gibraltar – are also largely self-governing, Westminster effectively has the power to unilaterally legislate, which is not the case with the Crown Dependencies.
PublicTechnology understands that the cumulative total of about 270,000 people that are citizens of the territories – all of whom either already hold British citizenship or are eligible to do so – will be able to obtain a digital ID if they live in the UK. But whether the electronic identification regime is introduced in the territories themselves will be down to the government of each territory.
United Kingdom
Elsewhere, the UK government’s plan is facing criticism over its potential conflict with the Common Travel Area (CTA).
Under the CTA, British and Irish citizens currently have the right to live and work freely in each other’s countries without requiring additional permission.
Political parties in Northern Ireland, including Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), have opposed the scheme, citing concerns about its impact on Irish citizens’ rights and the Good Friday Agreement.
Home Office officials have reportedly stated that the digital ID scheme will be impossible to implement without changes to the CTA, as exempting Irish citizens would be discriminatory against British citizens.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn, is consulting with the Irish government to find a solution that upholds existing agreements while progressing the introduction of digital ID.
United Kingdom
The Government Digital Service (GDS) team delivering GOV.UK One Login is “working closely” with a key technology supplier to help regain the system’s formal trust certification, which it lost five months ago.
Earlier this year it emerged that One Login had lost certification against the UK’s formal digital identity standards framework, which is administered by GDS parent organisation the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).
The UK digital identity and attributes trust framework (DIATF) enables technology providers to obtain a government-endorsed trustmark. Certified digital ID providers can then be searched for via a publicly available online register – a list which, since May of this year, no longer includes government’s own One Login platform.
Shortly after the trustmark was removed, government indicated that One Login had lost its badge because a supplier – understood to be authentication tech specialist iProov – had “allowed their certification to lapse”. But the One Login team was already “working to commence recertification”, government added – although a timeline or process for doing so was not provided, reports Computer Weekly.
Global
Daon has launched support for mobile driver’s licences (mDLs) within its biometric identity assurance platform. Powered by a new collaboration with MATTR, the capability allows governments, enterprises and service providers to verify trusted identity data, both online and in person, while giving individuals control over their personal information.
More than half of the US population now live in a state where an mDL is either active or in development. The UK has also announced that mDLs will be among the first digital documents made available in its upcoming digital wallet scheme, set to launch later this year.
The new Daon-MATTR framework enables the real-time, issuance and cryptographically verified acceptance of mDLs and other verifiable credentials in compliance with international standards.
Malta
Malta will launch a public call to set up a national digital identity wallet by the end of the year, the government announced during its 2026 budget speech.
“This wallet will give citizens and businesses a secure, simple and controlled way to share and verify their digital identity and certificates,” Finance Minister Clyde Caruana said in front of the Parliament on Monday.
The digital ID will implement the EU-wide “once-only” principle, which allows citizens, companies and institutions to provide information to public authorities only once. The year 2026 should also see the introduction of new e-government services, including digital local council services, according to the new budget.
The wallet will be made available as a smartphone app and provided by the Malta Digital Innovation Authority (MDIA). The CEO of the agency, Kenneth Brincat, has warned that the final product may not be available by December 2026, which is the deadline for EU member states to provide a European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet to citizens. A minimum viable product, however, will be delivered by then, Brincat promised in August.
United States
Dating app Tinder says Face Check, its facial verification feature, will roll out across the US. The biometric liveness detection feature is aimed at reducing impersonation and enhancing authenticity across its platform, according to Tinder’s parent company Match Group.
Face Check is currently required for all new users in California and several countries. Face Check uses facial liveness detection, powered by biometrics from FaceTec, to confirm that users are real and that their appearance matches their profile photos. Tinder keeps a user’s “FaceMaps” and “FaceVectors” for the lifetime of an account, and are deleted once an account is closed, according to the app’s FAQ and Privacy Policy.
According to the dating app maker, verification data is shared only with Tinder’s service providers, to “ensure smooth operation” of Face Check, with the data stored on its AWS servers. Addressing US residents, it says that it does not “sell” or “share” the data.
Benin
Benin’s government has rolled out a platform dubbed ePass to facilitate biometric passport application processes for the country’s citizens living abroad.
The platform, which involves contactless fingerprint and face biometrics verification, will make it possible for passport owners to renew their travel documents without having to make a trip back home, or queue up at embassies and consular offices.
A government announcement posted on X called the platform an innovative solution which has been designed to fully simplify and digitize the passport renewal process for Beninese citizens living abroad.
Canada
Quebec has adopted Bill 82, “An Act respecting the national digital identity”. The legislation, passed by the province’s National Assembly in late October, lays the foundation for a provincial digital ID system designed to give citizens a secure and convenient way to prove their identity online.
The Digital ID & Authentication Council of Canada (DIACC) applauded Quebec’s move, calling it “momentous” and praising the law for putting citizens in control of their personal information.
Under the new framework, Quebec will develop a trusted digital identity that residents can use to access government services (and potentially private services in the future) without repeatedly sharing sensitive personal data. The law embeds privacy by design, ensuring that only the minimum necessary information is shared for any given transaction.
Participation will be voluntary, and Quebecers can choose to use traditional ID methods instead. The law forbids treating those who opt out as suspicious or denying them services, as per IDTechWire.
United States
Apple is preparing to roll out a Passport-based Digital ID feature for the iPhone’s Wallet app, expanding its digital identity offerings beyond state IDs. At the Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas, Apple Pay & Wallet VP Jennifer Bailey announced that US users will soon be able to create a secure digital ID from their passport.
The digital passport credential can be used at select TSA airport checkpoints and other identity verification points, much like Apple’s existing digital driver’s licence programme. This functionality was previewed during the iOS 26 launch but did not ship with the initial release. Apple now says it will activate in an upcoming software update, likely by year’s end.
To set it up, users will scan their physical passport and take a live selfie, with Apple’s system ensuring the passport is genuine and matches the user. Apple said the digital passport card is “not a replacement for the physical passport” for international travel but it provides a convenient form of ID for domestic use.
