HID Global has announced the successful completion of the world’s first university pilot of NFC smart phones carrying digital keys.

First announced in September, the pilot involved a select group of students and staff at Arizona State University using NFC-enabled smart phones equipped with HID’s Secure Identity Object (SIO) Technology. Participants could gain access to their residence halls and other secure access areas by tapping their handset against a reader embedded in the door and entering a PIN, rather than use their plastic campus card.

Verizon announced certification for issuance of level three identity tokens, as defined by the U.S. government. The company is the first to be certified to issue credentials that have a “high confidence in the asserted identity’s validity.”