Spain this week rolled out Apple Wallet support for the European Union's digital COVID certificate, allowing citizens to store the so-called COVID-19 vaccine "passport" on Apple devices.
The EU Digital COVID Certificate went live in July to deliver proof of vaccination to people living in member nations and a handful of neighboring countries. Available as a paper or digital document issued by health authorities, the certificates serve as proof that a holder has either been vaccinated against, received a negative test result for or recovered from COVID-19. A QR code is included with each certificate to ensure authenticity.
Certificates allow for free movement within countries that recognize the document, and its existence helps to facilitate the lifting of restrictions when appropriate, the EU says.
While the digital version can be stored on any smartphone, individual countries can elect to implement support for digital wallets like Apple Wallet. Alternatively, users can turn to third-party solutions like Your Pass to generate a Wallet pass from an existing EU Digital COVID Certificate.
Spain's implementation has been updated with an option to download a pass directly to Apple Wallet.
9to5Mac spotted the update on Thursday.
News of Spain's support for Apple Wallet comes on the heels of similar capabilities rolled out in the UK. Last month, the UK's NHS app for iOS added the ability to export an NHS COVID Pass to Wallet.
Other countries, like Australia are also adopting Wallet support for their respective vaccine certificate initiatives. In Apple's domestic market, however, efforts have been somewhat spotty.
7 Comments
Speeding up the incoming visitor processing would be a great convenience.
We all better urgently understand what opening the door for biometrics in this "pass" "initiative" means.
If you dont see it thats fine, no need for trolling, but if you do this is an important aspect to realize while it is optional.
I have just tried to scan my Spanish EU certificate into my Wallet and it only accepts credit cards and will not accept my certificate so don’t think that is actually going to work
oh it will work. it will work so well that we might in the very near future not even be able to not use it! maybe a question of trying it out next week, same thing happened when cards were first introduced in Europe right in the beginning.