a completely digital wallet in puerto rico?
Having canceled our family vacation trips last summer because of the coronavirus, I wasn’t about to allow this seemingly neverending pandemic rob us of our much-needed travels again this year. Therefore, before our first trip in June, I went ahead and got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to avoid having to endure the nose swab each time I wanted to come back home to the island.
I’m glad I did. Later in August, the Puerto Rican government mandated that most businesses verify the vaccination status of their customers or operate at 50% capacity or less. Not wanting to carry around, and possibly misplace my vaccination card, I looked with interest into “VacuID”.
digital vaccination card
VacuID is essentially a digital vaccination card hosted within the Cesco Digital app which itself is available on both the Google Play and Apple App Stores. Once logged in, setup was easy and it took less than a minute to find my vaccination record.
It’s great to be able to leave my physical vaccination card safely at home even when I want to eat out. However, as I was looking through the app, another cool benefit dawned on me; the app also has a digital driver’s license.
digital driver’s license
It turns out that Puerto Rico is way ahead of the curve on this. Arizona and Georgia are the first states just beginning to roll out something that’s been in place here for a year! Now I can leave my wallet at home when going to the gym, for example, without worry of getting stopped.
digital wallet in puerto rico
I suppose the final piece of the digital wallet in Puerto Rico would be payment methods. While I appreciate the privacy of cash and certainly would never want to see it outright banned, I also appreciate the option and convenience of not having to carry it around. With widespread acceptance of ATH Movil across the island, as well as PayPal and Venmo to a lesser extent, we are well on our way.
One thing I haven’t tried yet is connecting my credit cards to Samsung Pay to see how well that is accepted here. I’ll do that next and be sure to update this space with my experience.
Good luck as we navigate this brave new digital world the best we can!
I’ve got my VacuID and it has been a convenience up until the other day when I had a medical appointment. Upon signing in and filling out preliminary paperwork, the receptionist asked me if I had gotten my covid-19 vaccinations and so I showed her my VacuID. She said that was fine BUT she needed the dates of vaccination or she was going to have to turn me away and I would have to reschedule. I’m not sure if somewhere on that CESCO app it has stored those dates, afterall I provided the dates to obtain the VacuID. Regardless, I had the dates of vaccination on my phone calendar. I guess I could have rambled any date for that matter as to not forfeit the appointment! Just a heads-up.
It is kind of strange that it doesn’t show the actual dates. I keep a picture of my vaccination card on my phone so I guess I would be covered… anyway, thanks for sharing!
That’s what I was originally using, a photo of my vaccination card but then there was all this talk about bogus vaccination cards being sold online So now I took another photo of my vaccination card after deleting it and have the VacuID. Hopefully this covers it all!