Ohio State University switched on Mobile BuckID on Tuesday 25 August 2026, giving people on its Columbus campus a mobile student ID that lives in Apple Wallet, Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet rather than on a plastic card. BuckID is the university’s ID card programme for students, faculty and staff, and the NFC campus credential that replaces it does everything the card did: it opens doors, pays for food and clocks staff in and out.
By launch day on 25 August 2026, 11,100 people had activated the credential. Fewer than 20% of that summer’s orientation attendees chose to take a physical card at all.
What a mobile BuckID opens and pays for
Ohio State is a public university in Columbus, Ohio, and one of the largest in the United States by enrolment, so a BuckID touches a lot of daily life. The mobile version covers residence hall and academic building access, dining locations, off-campus merchants that accept BuckID, recreation facilities, printing and copying, and timeclocks.
“A BuckID provides access to all kinds of important things at Ohio State,” said Josh Bodnar, director of BuckID. Every Columbus campus building that accepted a physical BuckID was due to accept the mobile credential before the autumn semester started.
The readers were already there
Mobile BuckID is read by the tap-enabled NFC readers already fitted across campus, the same contactless units that read the chip in the physical card. That is the part worth noting for anyone planning a similar project. Ohio State added a tap-to-pay chip to the physical BuckID in 2022, moving the campus from swipe to tap several years before the phone credential arrived, so the mobile rollout did not need a door hardware replacement programme behind it.
As general background, mobile campus credentials in the Apple, Google and Samsung wallets are provisioned as NFC applets inside the phone’s secure element, a tamper-resistant chip kept separate from the main processor, and they are read over the same 13.56 MHz contactless interface as a conventional contactless smart card. Ohio State has not named the credential platform vendor behind Mobile BuckID.
Two features do the practical work of making a phone credible as a door key. Apple’s Express Mode means the device does not need to be unlocked to tap, so a phone pulled from a pocket behaves like a card. Battery Reserve keeps the credential working for several hours after a compatible iPhone or Samsung Galaxy device has powered down on a low battery, which answers the obvious objection that a flat phone locks you out of your own room. Supported hardware includes compatible iPhone models, Apple Watch, eligible Android phones, and Samsung Galaxy devices including Samsung watches.
Activating it, and who cannot
Provisioning runs through the Ohio State app: users open the BuckID section and tap “Ready to Provision”. Two prerequisites have to be in place first, a photo on file, which is reviewed in three to five business days, and multi-factor authentication enabled. Only one credential is active per person, so activating the mobile version deactivates the physical card.
Not everyone at the university could switch. Some people at the Wexner Medical Center and some of the health science colleges were not eligible at launch. Students in fully online programmes and remote employees can use a basic digital BuckID in the Ohio State App instead. The rollout covers the Columbus campus only, with regional campuses planned for 2027.
A year early, and one thing dropping off
The university had originally targeted 2027 for a mobile credential and delivered it a year ahead of that after advocacy from student government. “Mobile is always kind of where we were headed… We have managed to beat that goal by a whole year,” Bodnar said.
One capability is moving in the other direction. Support for physical BuckID cards on COTA, the Central Ohio Transit Authority bus network that serves the Columbus area, ends at the close of 2026. From 2027, riders use either the Ohio State app or a transit card issued by COTA.
Campus and workplace credentials have been one of the steadier drivers of NFC deployment, and more coverage sits in our NFC and access control sections.
Read more at https://news.osu.edu/mobile-buckid-now-available-for-columbus-campus
