The French government agency Agence Nationale des Titres Sécurisés (ANTS) will be collaborating with IDEMIA, a provider of identity-related security services, on the national digital ID program, France Identité Numérique.

With their consent, French citizens using the service, will be able to prove their identity remotely by placing their eID card on the back of their smartphone.

IDEMIA said that hundreds of additional secure online services will soon be available thanks to the Agence Nationale de la Sécurité des Systèmes d’Information (ANSSI)-certified authentication system.

The updated French national eID card (CNIe) was launched in August 2021, and will enable French citizens to complete online transactions using their smartphone.

Citizens will receive an authentication request on their smartphone who will then place their CNIe on the back of their phone, which will communicate using Near-Field Communication technology.

The mobile app will securely read and authenticate the personal data held in the card’s chip. Citizens will need to provide their consent before authentication.

The digital ID system will be issued with a First Level security certificate from the French IT agency, ANSSI, and will therefore comply with the EU eIDAS regulations; Substantial and High1.

The system will reportedly protect citizens’ identity data, and will ensure that only the authorized citizen has control over it.

The FranceConnect platform, which underpins the program, has already attracted over 28 million users and 900 service providers. French citizens will soon be able to securely access these services using their new digital ID.

IDEMIA’s expertise is helping bring about substantial digital ID changes that are currently underway.

The firm is said to meet governments’ needs for securer and agile citizen databases, ID documents and online authentication of citizens’ identity after having successfully implemented over 135 online and offline identification programs across the world.

“As a French company, we are extremely proud to work on the national digital ID program. The new CNIe with its highly-secure chip is a great example of combining a physical ID document with a digital ID to securely access online services,”

said Pierre Lelièvre, Senior Vice President Digital ID at IDEMIA.

“Our mission is to create and offer a user-friendly means of electronic identification that facilitates and protects the online transfer of citizen identity data, so that transactions cannot be centralized or traced,”

said Valérie Peneau, General Government Inspector and Director of the France Identité Numérique program.