Mobile access adoption is growing, and its use cases are expanding. Employees increasingly expect it, and IT teams appreciate credentials managed the way the rest of the identity stack is managed. That momentum is real. But for many organisations, HID suggests that there’s not going to be a day when the last plastic card is collected, every credential lives on a phone and the badge printer is finally unplugged.

Why it matters

Organisations having the smoothest transition to mobile access are not treating hybrid as a stopgap on the way to something purer. They’re working hybrid on purpose, not as a holding pattern. In essence, cards and mobile are not competing - they are coexisting.

It is tempting to see every card still in circulation as a sign that the transition is incomplete. HID argues that we should erase that notion, because there are legitimate, permanent reasons to need both formats. A photo identification in a visible place — not concealed in a pocket — is still important in many professional settings. It’s comforting to see someone’s name and picture when you’re meeting them for the first time, along with their company logo and branding. Or when you’ve met them before but are grasping to remember their name. A photo ID humanises. It connects.

In any organisation with a bring-your-own-device culture, some employees simply don’t want a workplace credential installed on a personal phone. That's a privacy position worth respecting, not an adoption problem to be managed away. And of course, there are places where confidentiality, safety or distraction policies prohibit phones entirely, like production floors, operating theaters and the highly secure zones found in government and critical infrastructure facilities. In those environments, non-phone credentials are a necessity.

The paperless office and the cashless society were both declared inevitable. But time has shown us that although that prediction’s direction was correct, the destination is either not coming or very much delayed. Paper and cash still exist where they make sense. Access credentials are following a similar path.

It is no longer just a security decision 

There’s another reason the hybrid model holds: the decision itself has changed hands. Access control used to sit entirely with the security team. One owner, one set of requirements, one definition of success.

Today, access control decisions impact HR, IT, compliance and workplace experience, and each team has a legitimate stake. IT wants the credential tied into the identity life cycle, provisioned and revoked through systems like HID Origo, consistent with a zero-trust posture. HR and workplace experience teams care about change management, employee adoption and how the credential feels to use on day one. Compliance needs the audit trail to stand up to regulatory scrutiny.

More stakeholders at the table means more requirements, and sometimes competing ones. That diversity of needs is exactly why a single universal model can’t always work. A deliberately hybrid model is more flexible and more likely to satisfy diverse requirements.

Customised timelines

Adoption doesn't move at one speed. Banks, commercial real estate and higher education are further along with mobile access; manufacturing, healthcare and education are catching up on their own timelines. The same is true inside a single organisation: the front entrance, the BYOD-heavy sales floor and the sterile zone will each move at their own pace.

That, argues HID is not inconsistency. That's fit. The goal isn't to get every door and every employee to the same credential on the same day. It's to put mobile where it accelerates the experience and keep cards where the environment or the person calls for them.

The conclusion according to HID:  Mobile access is the direction. Hybrid is to do it well.