Passport goes digital, Finland's project to come to Europe as well
A Digital Travel Credentials (Dtc) project has been underway in Finland since September, with Finnair, Helsinki Airport [...]
Finnair
Since September in Finland, the Digital Travel Credentials (Dtc) which sees the company Finnair, Helsinki Airport and the European Union collaborate on testing a fully digital travel document that will effectively do away with the old dear passport.
Digital identity for flying to London
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The pilot project is being tested, to date, for Finnish passengers departing from Helsinki Airport and headed for London, Edinburgh and Manchester (British destinations that with Brexit thus require passports for all travelers from the European Union).
For these passengers, the Finnish border police have activated a special gate which is only active for those with Dtc, a kind of digital passport that provides for eliminating queues for border control.
The European project
At the moment, only Finnish citizens can participate, who must compulsorily register for the Dtc project at a police station.
The Digital Travel Credentials is a European Commission project that was launched during the pandemic and aims to eliminate all types of paper travel and identity documents, turning everything into one digital identity.
After Finland it will be the Croatia to experiment with the same type of service. While the Netherlands has started the same experimentation on air routes to Canada.
In the future, however, the EU's goal is to extend this form of electronic passport to all European citizens. A real revolution that wants to scrap the "most beautiful document in the world" for travelers, including stamps.
The other examples in the world
From 2020 onward, there are a growing number of projects that plan to "abandon" the paper passport to switch to digital identities, simplifying the travel experience and aiming to eliminate queues and delays at boarding gates and border controls at international airports.
Recently Singapore has launched a plan which from 2024 will provide passport-free travel for those boarding from Changi Airport.
The city-state will be one of the first countries in the world to introduce automated boarding which-through facial recognition and data processing-will lead the traveler to dispense with all kinds of documents.
Aruba - small caribbean island part of the Netherlands - promises to archive the use of passports once and for all with the testing of an app for the management and digital recognition of documents which is being tested in these very months. The app will calls "Aruba Happy One Pass".
