Australia is now letting its people store the digital vaccine certificate in their Apple Pay and Google Pay digital wallets. Once an individual has received two shots from either AstraZeneca or Pfizer, they will be able to access a digital certificate via Medicare, which is Australia’s universal health insurance scheme.
Individuals can either access Medicare on the my.gov.au website or they can download the Medicare app to add the digital certificate to their digital wallets. The digital certificate displays a vaccinated person’s name, birthday, document number and the start date of the certificate’s validity.
Just last week, England had also enabled Apple Wallet support for its digital certificates, otherwise known as the NHS COVID Pass. People in England will be able to use the NHS COVID Pass to display proof of vaccination if they were to enter a venue or attend an event. However, the NHS COVID Pass in a user’s Apple Wallet cannot be used for international travel. The NHS COVID Pass does not offer Google Pay support either.
Other countries that allow its users to store vaccine digital certificates in their digital wallets include the US and European nations, though the EU COVID Certificate can only be stored on Apple Wallet for now.
As for Malaysia’s National Immunisation Programme, the vaccination digital certificate is issued via MySejahtera. This is the only digital vaccine certificate at the moment and it’s also issued to those who got vaccinated through the state government or the private sector. To view your digital certificate in the MySejahtera app, you can find it at the bottom after you click the “Profile” tab.
In the future, we may even see the MySejahtera app being used as a vaccine passport, as it was reported in June that Malaysia was in talks with other countries to make it a possibility.