Louisiana Digital Driver’s License is Available for Free in the LA Wallet App
State of Digital ID in Louisiana
Residents can get a new or renewed digital driver’s license or digital ID right from LA Wallet. Louisiana has become the first state with fully operational electronic ID (eID) and mobile driver’s license (mDL).
LA Wallet is officially supported by the Office of the Governor, Alcohol Tobacco Control (ATC), Secretary of State’s Elections, Louisiana Law Enforcement, and casinos and gaming establishments. This means that the license can be used for alcohol and tobacco purchases, for voting, and for entry to casinos, respectively.
The app doesn’t simply display an image of a physical Louisiana driver license; it retrieves all license data from the OMV database to create a pixel-perfect and high-resolution rendering of document. Residents need to enter their license information and create LA Wallet credentials only one time. The app stores the digital license, so users can access it ‒ anytime, even without an internet connection.
This driving license app is highly secure and protects personal information. Karen St. Germain, OMV Commissioner, says they’ve tested the app “with all industry-standard security measures.”
How to Set Up LA Wallet
Louisiana residents wanting to set up their digital driver’s license should visit the App Store or Google Play Store to download the LA Wallet app. The download is free of charge, and the usual $5.99 ID activation fee has been temporarily waived due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Once the app is installed, users can create their personal account by entering their email address and a secure password. Next, users are required to create a four-digit PIN to ensure an extra level of security. LA wallet offers Touch ID or Face ID to access the app. Once the app is set up, a user can add their driver’s license.
To add their current driver’s license to LA Wallet, residents can use the camera of their mobile phone to scan the barcode on the back of their physical license or enter the required information manually. Users should fill in their name, number of license, and audit number. More information, including an educational video, is available on the LA Wallet website.
Digital ID App Functionality
The LA Wallet app offers valuable functionality. When displaying the front of the ID, the mDL displays a banner showing whether or not the ID is valid, along with the time since the information was updated. Users can flip their digital license to reveal an AAMVA barcode on the back that can be scanned using technology like that developed by IDScan.net. On the LA Wallet features page, users can suggest new features or vote for functionally suggested by others. Currently, the most requested feature is the ability to add insurance and vehicle registration documents.
The mDL is valid until the expiration date of the user’s physical driver’s license, which is typically 6 years. Afterward, a user should buy a new digital driver’s license via LA Wallet. If your driver’s license is set to expire in 180 days (90 days for digital ID), a yellow “Renew License” button will display on the home screen of LA Wallet. The app will display terms and conditions for license renewal, including the fee breakdown.
If a resident’s driver’s license is nearing expiration, but the option to renew doesn’t appear in the app, online renewal is not available. The most common reason is that the individual renewed their license online or via mail for the current insurance. In this case, they must visit a physical OMV location to renew credentials. State law also prohibits updating home address or name changes online. Eligibility information is available in the settings menu of LA Wallet under “Physical License Renewal.”
Digital Driver’s License Advantages
The existence of a digital driver’s license has raised many issues with regard to how to protect a resident’s personal property ‒ their phone ‒ when showing their mDL or eID to anyone other than law enforcement. The Louisiana State Police adopted a strict “hands-off” and “no-touch” policy so that the ID can be viewed and scanned without the phone changing hands. This policy has generated demand for digital ID scanning technologies.
IDScan.net a leading developer of identity verification technology. Our ID scanning solutions can read both digital and physical documents, including those stored in the LA Wallet app. We offer provides a full range of services from ID parsing, ID authentication, instant mobile ID validation to custom solutions. Our company has built a comprehensive database of literally all government-issued IDs and driver’s’ licenses from all 50 states. The database includes military ID cards, Tribal IDs, Canadian health cards, and international IDs. Our experts regularly review and update the database with the latest ID versions.
IDScan.net offers a wide range of solutions to meet the unique needs of your business: off-the-shelf solutions, our own products, and ready-made SDKs and APIs. Among Off-The-Solutions, you can benefit from age verification, visitor management, auto-capture, and retail loss prevention. Amongst our most popular products are WizzForms, data capture and auto-population software, and VeriScan, a visitor management platform. Our products are available in desktop, mobile, tablet, and online versions.
With our ID Parsing Software Development Kit, you can implement ID reading capabilities into your product promptly. This solution can read the magnetic stripe and 2D barcode, including PDF417 format, from all state-issued documents available in our database. Our ID scanning solution doesn’t require internet connection so you can scan documents anywhere by just pointing your phone camera. Since the ID scanning is held on each device locally, you get results in a few minutes without delays. If you want to implement this parsing kit, Besides, IDScan.net has proficient technical support available 24/7.
Contact the IDScan.net team to learn about our solutions and their applications.
Other Louisiana mDL resources
Louisiana’s Legal Digital Driver’s License (LA Wallet)
Digital Driver’s License Application LA Wallet Surpasses 1.5 million Users (Cision PR Newswire)
