Beginning back in December, the Missouri Department of Revenue began to introduce changes that are to come to the driver’s licenses and identification cards of Missouri in the near future. Already offices around Missouri have begun to make the conversions, and according to the website for the Missouri Department of Revenue, it is said that by April 2013, everything should be ready to go.

The current license design as everybody knows it, a horizontal rectangular piece of plastic, is about to change for people who are 21 years old and younger. From now on, starting at the time a teenager first gets their license, up until they reach their twenty-first birthday, they will have a license which is read from a vertical direction instead. This change was designed especially to help make it easier to spot underage individuals. Any minors who have not yet gotten their license, but plan to, will be given the new license. Since the process of converting the licenses is still underway, a temporary paper license will be given to individuals once they pass their driving tests until the actual license arrives in the mail. Those under 21 who have already obtained their license though, will not be required to do anything until they reach the expiration date on their current license.

However, newly licensed drivers are not the only ones having to make do with a temporary license. From now on, licenses will be sent out in the mail, after being produced in a single and secure facility. The permanent license will then be mailed out to the applicant’s home within seven to ten days. There are also changes being made to the license itself, such as special printing that reacts to UV light, and so forth. These all-around changes are being put in place to intensify security, and make it more difficult to commit identity theft, duplication, and other forms of fraud.