Car Hire With a Digital Driving Licence – a Reality Soon?

Digital driving licences have been talked about for a long time, and have been released in a number of countries already. It’s only a matter of time before they become a reality in the UK and the wider world too.

While it is not currently possible to get a digital driving licence in the UK (with physical licences being required for car hire) we predict this will become a reality quite soon. Following the coronavirus pandemic we’ve seen an acceleration of digitisation of documentation (such as digital vaccine documents) and it seems inevitable that ID such as driving licences will follow.

Indeed, former UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps made a statement back in 2021 on the arrival of digital driving licences by the year 2024, with the DVLA stating: “We will introduce a digital driving licence for provisional drivers and also start to build a customer account facility. This will ultimately give our customers personalised, easy and secure access to a range of services and allow them more choice in how they transact with us.”

Car hire requirements across the continent and beyond still largely need the use of physical licences to hire vehicles, however digital driving licences are available in Australia, the Middle East and a number of European countries such as Denmark, Germany, Spain, Poland and Portugal. Indigo is able to assist with digital driving licence car hire around these caveats, so do get in touch to book.

For the UK, while there hasn’t been any major recent announcement on the arrival of digital driving licences, we would expect their introduction to be inevitable within the near future.

As seen in other countries, could potentially revolutionise the ease at which millions could hire a car, if indeed the requirement to present a physical licence is relaxed following this.

We’ll be sure to keep an eye on developments in digital driving licences and how they could impact hiring a car as soon as we see any updates.

Having working solely in the car hire industry since leaving school, car hire/travel is a huge part of my life and something that gives me great satisfaction and enjoyment. I love coming across new products/locations and sharing these details with our customers via our online platforms.