The Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation has opened access to a digital version of the national passport through the Diia application, President Volodymyr Zelensky said during an online broadcast.
“We are among the first to have introduced digital passports, and definitely the first to have given them the same rights as for plastic and paper documents,” Zelensky said.
A digital passport can be used in all spheres of Ukrainian life, he said.
“Once the quarantine is over, digital passport will become an integral part of life for today’s over 19.5 million holders of a Ukrainian ID card or biometric passport,” Zelensky said.
The ministry stressed that with a digital passport gives access to travel by train, plane, use of mail services, banking operations, age confirmation, health and hotel services, personal identification with law enforcement bodies, use of libraries, communications, public services (both at centers which provide them and on the government’s Diia website of public services), enter an administrative building, and get a cash refund for a returned product.
The security system built into the Diia system is modern and entirely safe, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov said.
“Our partners, the EPAM company, helped us develop a document-verification system which uses a QR code. Today this is the safest way of passport verification,” Fedorov said.
Any Ukrainian who uses the application can check the identity of another user, he said.
Maksym Sokoliuk, head of the State Migration Service, said during the presentation that almost 16 million Ukrainians had successfully applied for foreign travel passports and nearly four million had received ID cards. A Ukrainian ID card is valid for travel to Georgia and Turkey, and two more countries will be added soon, he said.
Some 29,500 Ukrainians took part in the trialing of digital passports, he said.
It was reported that on April 15 the Ukrainian government approved a resolution on electronic passports in the Diia application, by confirming their status as a digital analog of the paper document.
On April 3, the Ministry of Digital Transformation began testing ID cards and biometric foreign travel passports in the Diia smartphone app.
