Regardless of which phone you have, provided you have something recent, you can get your vaccine status stored locally.
Mobiles can do a lot of things — taking photos, browsing the web, some can even take a temperature if you really need them to — but one of the ways that may really affect your life is how they’re overtaking the wallet. Simply put, with digital wallet services, your phone is replacing your wallet.
It’s not just about replacing cash with a digital equivalent, mind you, but rather how physical cards can go digital.
Depending on where you live in Australia, you might be able to get a digital driver’s license, something that is rolling out across states, while medical health funds have recently been added to Apple Wallets, too.
And now if you’ve received two COVID-19 vaccinations, you can also get a digital certificate on your phone to store and show people, if the topic ever comes up.
The news means vaccinations against COVID-19 showing up in a digital record can be added to the digital wallet respective on your phone, be it the Apple Wallet on the iPhone or the Google Pay wallet on supported Android devices, such as phones and wearables.
Keep in mind that while every iPhone has supported the Apple Wallet since the iPhone 5S and higher, not every Android supports the Google Pay wallet, and if you don’t have an NFC-enabled Android phone, you might want to add a wallet with a wearable.
The downloaded vaccine status is basically a record from Medicare, downloading a digital certificate but not the full Medicare card. That’s not something Australians are seeing yet, and this is more just the vaccine information, so you can show people if you need to.
The COVID card and vaccination information doesn’t appear to be dependent on a WiFi or internet connection and is stored locally, available to people who have been vaccinated through either the Medicare Express Plus app or through the MyGov website via the Medicare section, working on phones across the country now.
