Posted by Rohey Livne – Group Product Supervisor
In as we speak’s interconnected world, managing digital identification is important. Android goals to assist open requirements that guarantee seamless interoperability with varied identification suppliers and companies. As a part of this purpose, we’re excited to announce that Android, by way of Credential Supervisor’s DigitalCredential API, now natively helps OpenID4VP and OpenID4VCI for digital credential presentation and issuance respectively.
What are digital credentials?
Digital credentials are cryptographically verifiable paperwork. The most typical rising use case for digital credentials is identification paperwork comparable to driver’s licenses, passports, or nationwide ID playing cards. Within the coming years, it’s anticipated that Android builders will develop progressive purposes of this expertise for a wider vary of non-public credentials that customers might want to current digitally, together with training certifications, insurance coverage insurance policies, memberships, permits, and extra.
Digital credentials might be offered by any put in Android app. These apps are referred to as “credential holders”; sometimes digital pockets apps comparable to Google Pockets or Samsung Pockets.
Different apps not essentially considered “wallets” may have a use for exposing a digital credential. For instance an airline app would possibly need to supply their customers’ air miles reward program membership as a digital credential to be introduced to different apps or web sites.
Digital credentials might be introduced by the consumer to some other app or web site on the identical machine, and Android additionally helps securely presenting Digital Credentials between units utilizing the identical business normal protocols utilized by passkeys (CTAP), by establishing encrypted communication tunnels.
Customers can retailer a number of credentials throughout a number of apps on their machine. By leveraging OpenID4VP requests from web sites utilizing the W3C Digital Credential API, or from native apps utilizing Android Credential Supervisor API, a consumer can choose what credential to current from throughout all accessible credentials throughout all put in digital pockets apps.
How digital credentials work
Presentation
To current the credential, the verifier sends an OpenID4VP request to the Digital Credential API, which then prompts the consumer to pick out a credential throughout all of the credentials that may fulfill this request. Notice that the consumer is choosing a credential, not a digital pockets app:
As soon as the consumer chooses a credential to proceed with, Android platform redirects the unique OpenID4VP request to the digital pockets app that holds the chosen credential to finish the presentation again to the verifier. When the digital pockets app receives the OpenID4VP request from Android, it may possibly additionally carry out any extra due-diligence steps it must carry out previous to releasing the credential to the verifier.
Issuance
Android additionally permits builders to subject their very own Digital Credentials to a consumer’s digital pockets app. This course of might be executed utilizing an OpenID4VCI request, which prompts the consumer to decide on the digital pockets app that they need to retailer the credential in. Alternatively, the issuance might be executed straight from throughout the digital pockets app (some apps won’t even have an express consumer dealing with issuance step in the event that they retailer credentials primarily based on their affiliation to a signed-in consumer account).
Over time, the consumer can repeat this course of to subject a number of credentials throughout a number of digital pockets apps:
Notice: To make sure that at presentation time Android can appropriately listing all of the credentials that digital pockets apps maintain, digital wallets should register their credentials’ metadata with Credential Supervisor. Credential Supervisor makes use of this metadata to match credentials throughout accessible digital pockets apps to the verifier’s request, in order that it may possibly solely current an inventory of legitimate credentials that may fulfill the request for the consumer to pick out from.
Early adopters
As Google Pockets introduced yesterday, quickly customers will have the ability to use digital credentials to get better Amazon accounts, entry on-line well being companies with CVS and MyChart by Epic, and confirm profiles or identification on platforms like Uber and Bumble.
These use circumstances will benefit from customers’ digital credentials saved in any digital pockets app customers have on their Android machine. To that finish, we’re additionally pleased to share that each Samsung Pockets and 1Password will maintain customers’ digital credentials as digital wallets and assist OpenID requirements by way of Android’s Credential Supervisor API.
Be taught extra
Credential Supervisor API lets each Android app implement credential verification or present credentials on the Android platform.
Take a look at our new digital credential documentation on how you can turn out to be a credential verifier, making the most of customers’ current digital credentials utilizing Jetpack Credential Supervisor, or to turn out to be a digital pockets app holding your individual credentials for different apps or web sites to confirm.
