The database is gone. The need to prove who you are is not.
The digital driving licence is still happening. In the week of 20 July 2026, as Andy Burnham formed a government, the proposed universal government-backed digital ID scheme was scrapped. The programmes that were already running carried on, and it is one of them. For the person holding it, nothing about the last few days changed the everyday moment it was built for: a tap on a phone, a check that clears in seconds, no passport photographed and uploaded to prove a single fact.
The everyday reality is steadier than the headline suggests. A central state credential was dropped, while the parts of public and commercial life that depend on proving who someone is carried on unchanged. A landlord still has to confirm a right to rent, and an employer still has to run a right-to-work check. When a bank opens an account, it still has to know the person behind it is real and identified. None of those duties went away when the ID card did.
The scheme that was cancelled was the universal, government-backed credential: one state-issued digital identity, sitting on central-government infrastructure, that people would hold and present. That model had already been softened once. The mandatory-to-hold element was dropped in a Commons statement on 15 January 2026, when the government confirmed that a government-issued digital ID would no longer be compulsory, although it still intended digital right-to-work checks to become mandatory by the end of the Parliament. A petition against digital ID cards had by then gathered roughly 2,984,191 signatures, close to three million.
Alongside that credential, a set of separate programmes has been running for months, and they continue. GOV.UK One Login is the sign-in and identity-checking service people already use to reach central-government services. The GOV.UK Wallet is the app-based place where verified documents can be held. The digital driving licence sits inside that wallet. These are pre-existing, live pieces of the digital-government agenda rather than parts of the scrapped card.
The distinction that matters for any business is simple to state. Government rejected one particular design, a single central credential. The underlying duty it sat on top of, verifying that a person is who they claim to be, is untouched, and it still lands on firms and public bodies whether or not a national card exists.
It is the clearest case of the need to prove identity surviving the loss of a central scheme.
The digital driving licence ran a private trial from December 2025, with wider public rollout planned for later in 2026. It sits inside the GOV.UK Wallet in the GOV.UK One Login app, it is delivered with the DVLA, and it is optional. Physical photocards continue for anyone who prefers them.
For the person, the appeal is the everyday moment. Proving your age at a shop or a DIY counter today usually means handing over a piece of plastic that carries your full address, your date of birth and your licence details, all at once. The digital version is meant to let you show the specific fact that is being asked for, from your phone, without surrendering the rest. Government material describes these as in-person, everyday age-proof uses. Wider online uses have been discussed in the press, though they have not been set out by government, so they sit in the “expected later” column rather than the “available now” one.
The point underneath the licence is the one that carries across the whole agenda. That licence still has to be issued to the right person and bound to the individual who presents it. The card was only ever one place that check might have lived. Take it away and the check still has to happen, and the open question is who runs it.
Two obligations make the continuity concrete, because they are in force and they land on ordinary businesses.
The first is money laundering. On 26 February 2026, HM Treasury and DSIT published guidance confirming that certified, registered digital identity services can satisfy the identity-verification requirement in Regulation 28 of the Money Laundering Regulations. The regulated firm still owns its risk assessment, its customer due diligence and its overall AML compliance. The identity check can be met digitally, through a certified service, with the person proving who they are in seconds rather than posting in documents.
The second is age. On 30 June 2026 the Home Office laid regulations to allow digital age verification for alcohol sales in pubs, clubs, restaurants and shops in England and Wales, via a registered provider at medium level of confidence. That change is not yet in force, with an implementation timetable still to follow. Right-to-work and right-to-rent checks already run through certified digital routes, and the government has signalled that digital right-to-work checks are heading towards mandatory.
Each of these assumes the same thing. Somewhere in the process, a person has to be verified to a defined standard. For that, the government has chosen a certified, regulated market of providers over a single central card.
This market already exists, it is on a statutory footing, and it is public.
OfDIA, the office within DSIT, maintains the register of certified digital identity and attribute services. At the point of the OfDIA 2026 Annual Report, it listed 46 registered providers offering 64 certified services across identity, attribute, orchestration, holder and component roles. Its statutory footing is Part 2 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025. The DVS Trust Framework 1.0 was published on 9 June 2026 and comes into force on 1 September 2026, subject to accreditation of conformity assessment bodies by the UK Accreditation Service. Kantara Initiative is the first UKAS-accredited conformity assessment body for the UK’s digital identity trust framework, accredited in November 2025.
The wider ecosystem is larger again. The 2026 Digital Identity Sectoral Analysis, reported in the OfDIA 2026 Annual Report, put the UK digital identity sector at an estimated 275 firms, around £2,027 million in annual revenue and an estimated 9,624 full-time equivalents.
The design principle running through all of it is decentralisation. There is no central register of citizens behind these services. Data stays where it already sits, at the bank, the mobile network, the government department that issued a document, and the person chooses which fact to share and with whom. Proving your date of birth to buy alcohol does not hand over your address. Proving your right to work does not expose your bank details. The check confirms one thing, and only that thing.
OneID is certified under the government’s Digital Verification Services Trust Framework and listed on the public GOV.UK register. Verification runs from the person’s own phone, and the outcome is the plain human experience the whole system is meant to deliver: a tap, a cleared check in seconds, no document upload for the customer to abandon halfway through. In the past year, 13 million people have verified themselves through OneID. That is the market doing the job a central database was once imagined to do, without a single credential and without a central store of everyone’s identity.
For any firm that onboards customers, checks age, confirms a right to work or a right to rent, or runs customer due diligence, the practical position after the scrapping has barely moved.
The obligations you had last month are the obligations you have this month. The certified route to meet them is unchanged, and with the DVS Trust Framework 1.0 due in force on 1 September 2026, it is becoming clearer and more formal, not less. The sensible move is to choose a provider from the public register whose certified services match the checks you actually run, and to treat identity verification as infrastructure you rely on rather than a scheme you wait on.
The digital driving licence shows the shape of what comes next: identity proved from a phone, one fact at a time, through providers a business can pick from a public register today.
Is the digital driving licence still happening after the ID card was scrapped? Yes. The digital driving licence is a separate programme from the cancelled universal digital ID scheme. It ran a private trial from December 2025, with wider public rollout planned for later in 2026. It sits inside the GOV.UK Wallet in the GOV.UK One Login app, is delivered with the DVLA, and is optional, so physical photocards continue.
What exactly was scrapped? The universal, government-backed digital ID credential, a single state-issued identity on central-government infrastructure, was scrapped in the week of 20 July 2026. The mandatory-to-hold element had already been dropped in a Commons statement on 15 January 2026.
Do businesses still need to verify identity and age? Yes. Money laundering rules, right-to-work and right-to-rent checks, and age-restricted sales all still require a person to be verified to a defined standard. Guidance published by HM Treasury and DSIT on 26 February 2026 confirms that certified digital identity services can meet the identity-verification requirement in Regulation 28 of the Money Laundering Regulations, while the firm keeps responsibility for its wider compliance.
Is this digital ID by another name? No. The certified services on the public register are decentralised. There is no central register of citizens behind them. Data stays where it already sits, and the person chooses which single fact to share for a given check.
Where can I see the certified providers? The Office for Digital Identities and Attributes, within DSIT, maintains a public register of certified digital identity and attribute services. At the OfDIA 2026 Annual Report it listed 46 providers offering 64 certified services, on a statutory footing under Part 2 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025.