Virtual id

Valley City State University in North Dakota this week unveiled Viking Mobile ID, a smartphone app students can use to validate their identities anywhere they would normally use a physical card. The university’s president touted the offering as a “safe, convenient and highly secure” alternative for students purchasing meals, accessing buildings or checking out books from the library. Digital IDs are a growing trend in higher education as institutions turn more of their services digital. And adoption among students also grows — the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced last December that transactions using digital IDs had doubled in a single month.