In 2018, we set out to build something that had never been done before at scale: a legally-recognized digital driver's license for the state of Louisiana.
What followed was two years of engineering, policy negotiation, legal review, and — most importantly — listening to the people who would actually use it.
What we built
LA Wallet launched as the first digital ID accepted in lieu of a physical license at Louisiana state agencies, TSA checkpoints, and retail locations. Today it serves over 2 million users with more than 4 million verifiable transactions — and zero fraud incidents.
What we learned
Technology is the easy part. The hard part is trust. Every stakeholder — from the DMV commissioner to the convenience store clerk — had to believe the system worked before they would accept it. Building that trust required as much communication as it did code.
Privacy is not a feature, it is a foundation. From day one, we designed LA Wallet around the principle that your phone should not have to phone home to verify your age. The credential lives on the device. Verification happens peer-to-peer. No central authority watches every transaction.
Standards matter more than you think. Participating in ISO working groups for mobile driver's licenses (ISO 18013-5) shaped how we built LA Wallet and gave us a seat at the table when states started calling.
The lesson underneath all of it: the systems that endure are the ones built with the people who use them in mind — not just the people who buy them.