According to Le Parisien your Carte Vitale will soon be available on your phone. French Social Security health Insurance has just rolled out an application, which allows social security beneficiaries in eight pilot departments to create and e-Carte Vitale on their smartphone. In the rest of France, this is expected to become available in 2024. But do’nt worry the physical Carte Vitale is not being phased out yet.
The eight departments involved in the test phase are: Alpes-Maritimes, Loire-Atlantique, Puy-de-Dôme, Bas-Rhin, Rhône, Saône -et-Loire, Sarthe and Seine-Maritime. Applicants must be over 16 years old, not under guardianship, and of course, have a phone with Android version 12 or iOS 7 at least. Once installed on your smartphone, the application requires verification of your identity. This involves entering your social security number, and attaching an identity document to the application. After a security check carried out by l’Assurance maladie, you will have access to your card in a digitized version.
Doctors and pharmacys will have a new scanner for either a QR code or an NFC which works like a non-contact payment. NFC stands for near-field communication ou as they would like us to say in French la CCP communication en champ proche. This will then initiate the process to generate feuilles de soins électroniques that are submitted to the Sécu just like a physical CV. One of the advantages is that you are more likely to have your card with you if you have it on your phone. Another advantage is supposed to be fewer transmission errors.
Also in the application, you will be able to view the care expenses incurred for seven days after the billing date.
This system is part of the announcements made in May by Gabriel Attal, then ministre de l’Action et des Comptes publics. He had announced his idea for merging the Carte Vitale and the identity card in one and the same secure card, as is the case in Belgium, Portugal and Sweden. We’ll see as this rolls out next year.
Learn about the European Health Insurance Card here. This is a sort of Carte Vitale valid in all of Europe so handy if you get sick while travelling.
