For some frequent travelers, signing up with Clear can provide an even faster experience going through airport security than the standard experience of being a TSA PreCheck member. Clear’s system hasn’t always been to everyone’s liking — in 2022, David Zipper wrote at Slate that the service “is simply a way to pay extra to jump the queue accessing a federally mandated process.” Still, a lot of people have opted to pay for the service — 16 million, according to a Washington Post article.
Changes are coming to the technology Clear uses in airports, and as Caroline Tanner reports at The Points Guy, the company will begin laying the groundwork for those upgrades beginning on November 30, 2023. Clear refers to this new system as NextGen Identity+, and referred to it as “the highest fidelity digital identity” in an announcement of the forthcoming changes.
Clear notes that its “Lane of the Future” is set debut in 2024. The company’s announcement refers to NextGen Identity+ as an “enhanced standard” and states that it “now includes data directly from the issuing source.” What this translates to, as Tanner’s article explains, is that Clear members will be able to use their face to identify themselves at the company’s kiosks.
Plot Twist: Traveler Satisfaction With North American Airports Grew This Year
That is despite many of the issues the industry is still grappling withClear’s announcement notes that the upgrades are both free and mandatory, and they recommend that travelers bring current identification — preferably a passport — to the airport the next time they travel.
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