Can Phone Pictures Help Me “Get By” if My Wallet Is Stolen?

Smartphones make it easy to create photos of one’s entire wallet. But what types of photographed ID are valid? Can phone pictures help me “get by” if my wallet is stolen? Losing one’s wallet seems like losing part of your world. —Harlan B.

You didn’t say how old you were, Harlan, but I’m going to guess you’re well past your 20s (and not just because “Harlan” isn’t exactly the kind of name you hear a lot of down at your local skatepark): Only someone for whom getting carded is a distant memory could imagine Oregon’s dour, gimlet-eyed liquor clerks cheerfully accepting a selfie of somebody’s driver’s license as ID. Hell, you’re lucky if they take a U.S. passport.

As far as I know, there’s no government-related credential where a phone picture is acceptable in lieu of the original—unless you count proof of vaccination, where usually you can hand the bouncer a note in crayon signed “Sincerely, Harlan’s Doctor” and get waved through.

The private sector is a different story. While obviously (I hope) a phone picture still won’t cut it, lots of the credit card companies, insurance providers and banks whose plastic fattens your wallet do offer digital versions of their cards that you can carry in apps like Apple Wallet or Google Pay.

These virtual cards may make your wallet-deprived economic activity a little easier, but when it comes to actually proving your identity sans wallet, you’re out of luck: You can’t get a virtual Oregon driver’s license to put in your virtual wallet with all the virtual credit cards and virtual concert tickets (and one virtual condom, just in case).

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately; see below) there are currently no serious plans to create a digital driver’s license, or DDL, program in Oregon. But as you probably guessed from the snappy acronym, DDLs are already a thing in a handful of states, including Colorado and Arizona.

This development could be convenient or Orwellian, depending very much on who gets to see data about where and when such IDs were presented. Also, there are digital-divide issues: 40 million American adults still don’t own a smartphone, which is about the same number who think Donald Trump won the 2020 election. (Too bad they’re not the same people—they’d still be crazy, but we’d hear a lot less about it.)

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.