mDL

mDL is a mobile driving licence on a smartphone, standardised under ISO/IEC 18013-5 and required by EU law to be issued for the EUDI Wallet.

An mDL (mobile driving licence) is a digital version of a driving licence that a holder carries on a smartphone instead of, or alongside, the physical card. It is standardised under ISO/IEC 18013-5, which defines how the licence data is structured, cryptographically signed and presented to a reader - such as a police checkpoint terminal or an age-verification kiosk - over NFC, Bluetooth or a scanned QR code. The data format used is mdoc, the same CBOR/COSE-based credential structure that ISO 18013-5 defines for other mobile identity documents.

In the EU the mDL is no longer a possibility being explored: Directive (EU) 2025/2205 on driving licences obliges member states to issue mobile driving licences (Article 5(1)), to be used with EUDI Wallets as an attestation of attributes alongside the mandatory PID, and to make them retrievable electronically free of charge. Member states must adopt the implementing measures by 26 November 2028 and apply them from 26 November 2029. Because the format supports selective disclosure, a holder can prove a specific fact - for example that they are entitled to drive a certain vehicle category, or that they are over a given age - without showing every field printed on the physical licence.