France Identity: a bug on iPhone further delays the deployment of the app

Decidedly, the deployment of France Identity is painful. The application, which must accompany the launch of the digital identity card, was to come out of its beta phase. Problem, an embarrassing bug on iPhone postpones the deadline again.

In April 2022, the government confirmed the upcoming launch of a new application dedicated to digital identity: France Identity. Designed as a digital extension of your physical identity card, this app allows you to prove your identity without disclosing all your datato generate a single-use credential, or to easily connect to more than 1,000 services thanks to the integration of France Connect.

But that’s not all, since France Identity will also allow you to prove your majority (without revealing your identity) or even to give a power of attorney in one click. The application has entered the beta phase since October 2022 on iPhone and Android (5000 users in total spread over the two OS).

As the government specifies, the idea is to use the feedback from these first users to improve the operation of the app and especially to detect possible bugs. And precisely, we have just learned that the development team has discovered a defect on the iPhone.

A bug on iPhone further delays the arrival of France Identity

This technical concern obviously concerns NFC, the technology used for contactless which allows the data contained in the new digital identity card, in circulation since August 2021, to be transferred to their smartphone. According to the injured users, the iPhone is having difficulty reading the data on the card. “On some newer devices, reading may take several tries.” specifies the notice of the beta of the app.

An annoying problem, since each time the user needs the highest level of security to prove his identity via the app, he must bring the physical card closer to his phone to access his data…

Apple is investigating the issue

According to the development team, “the issue is being investigated with Apple”. Note that this bug mainly affects iPhones launched since 2020, i.e. iPhone 12, iPhone 13 and iPhone 14. As you can imagine, this concern further disrupts the deployment schedule of the appwhich was expected to come out of its beta phase in the coming weeks.

At the time of writing these lines, the beta was supposed to bring together 20,000 users, which is still far from the case (still at 5000 since September 2022). Be that as it may, ANSSI, the national information systems security agency, intends to take advantage of this setback to continue the analysis of the application code. As for the final launch of the app, the date has not yet been set by the government.