The end of inconsistency. Two years after its launch, the dematerialized identity card is officially accepted by the SNCF in the event of identity checks on board trains, announced the general director of the railway company Alain Krakovitch on Tuesday, May 28.
Via a message on However, agents are in the process of being informed of the measure, which “always requires a little time”, underlined the director of SNCF Travel.
Widespread application since September
This measure comes after the company had been singled out by the State application itself last year, after a traveler had questioned the SNCF about the admissibility of a dematerialized identity card during control. On X, a surreal exchange then involved the Internet user, the SNCF and the France Identity application. The railway company insisted on the fact that a traveler must have his “physical identity document” with him during the trip for control, while France Idabilité reminded the SNCF that this was indeed a legal means of prove your identity, supporting legal text.
The SNCF had at the time confirmed to Le Parisien that “only physical identity documents listed in the conditions are accepted for the sake of of the fight against fraud”. However, the application aims precisely to make identity documents tamper-proof and to offer its holder digital supporting documents having the same value as physical documents.
Since the deployment in August 2021 of new smart identity cards, several thousand citizens have been able to test the France Idêtes application which allows this identity document to be loaded onto their phone since 2022. The service has been generalized to all holders of an electronic identity card in September, after a testing phase carried out for a little over a year. Since February, the dematerialization of the driving license has also been possible for all those who have a bank card format license, in circulation since 2013.
