France is integrating its national digital ID card, the CNIe, with smartphones to allow French citizens to complete online transactions, through a collaboration with Idemia. Idemia was chosen by the Agence Nationale des Titres Securises to create the authentication system. This gives CNIe-holders an option to fulfill authentication requests by holding their digital identification card to their back to enable NFC connection. According to the announcement, the smartphone-based digital identification will soon be made available for authentication to hundreds secure online services.
The system has been certified by the Agence Nationale de la Securite des Systemes d’Information. Pierre Lelievre, comments that « As a French company we are extremely proud of working on the national digital ID programme. The new CNIe, with its highly-secure chips, is an excellent example of how a physical ID document can be combined with a digital ID in order to secure access to online services ». FranceConnect, with 28 million users and 900 service providers, is the foundation of the French digital ID system, according to Idemia. Valerie Peneau says, »Our mission it to create and provide a user-friendly method of electronic identification that facilitates, protects, and transfers citizen identity data online, so that transactions can’t be centralized or traced. »
