Report says UK app for checking the identity of EU citizens won’t work on iPhones
The UK government plans to launch a smartphone app to enable the 3.5 million EU citizens living in the UK to apply to remain in the country after Brexit. The app users will have to answer three “simple” questions, take a “selfie” to be checked against government records and then use a compatible smartphone with a NFC chip to “scan” the chip on their passport to verify their identity. Once an EU citizen has completed the process, the UK government says a decision will be made on whether they can stay in the UK within two weeks.
However, the BBC is reporting that the app will only work with smartphones running the Android operating system. The UK government is pushing Apple to also unlock the NFC chip on iPhones so that the app can use this mechanism to check the chip on the user’s passport, according to the report. As things stand, people with Apple devices will not be able to scan their passports and will either have to borrow a suitable Android phone to complete their application or post their passport to the UK Visa and Immigration Service instead. The BBC also says that older versions of Android phones and some low-cost models are also unable to scan a passport chip.
For more details, see the report on the BBC web site