This should be nifty if you’re living in Japan.
iPhones running iOS 13 will be able to scan NFC chips in Japanese identity cards thanks to Apple’s inclusion of broader access to NFC chips via third-party apps.
As a result, Japanese citizens will be able to scan their identity cards, storing the information on their phones.
This also marks one of the first times in which third-party uses have been authorized by Apple.
The identity cards, termed “My Number” in Japanese, but “Individual Number Cards” in English, were introduced alongside a numerical ID system in 2015. All residents of Japan are issued a number on paper that’s used for various administrative purposes such as filing taxes, though it’s not mandatory to hold the card itself.
The contains an NFC chip that can be read by a government-developed app capable of storing personal information. Certain Android phones already support this, but the popularity of the iPhone in Japan and the broad adoption rates enjoyed by new versions of iOS mean that it’s likely to see a wider user base.
The Japanese government has confirmed the report.
Upon its release, the NFC reader in iPhones was originally locked down so that it could only be used for Apple Pay. The readers found on Android-based devices were able to read all NFC tags. With the advent of iOS 13, this restriction has been removed, allowing the device to scan NFC chips in other formats. Apple has stated that it still needs to approve apps that use this feature on a case-by-case basis.
The company also put in place a protection against scanning without user permission: other than Apple Pay, third-party apps can only read an NFC tag when the app is in the foreground.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.