EWC brings update on EUDI Wallet pilots

The European Union is currently conducting four Large-Scale Pilots (LSPs) which will lay down the foundation of the future EU Digital Identity Wallet.  The pilots are designed to test the wallet in a wide range of use cases.

One of the consortiums involved in the pilots is the EU Digital Identity Wallet Consortium (EWC). Kickstarted by Finish and Swedish government agencies, the project was assigned by the European Commission to develop use cases for travel, payments and organizational digital identity.

EWC, however, has been leveraging innovation from European startups: It now gathers more than 80 participating organizations, including Visa, Digidentity, Amadeus Finnair and Yubico.

“I think one of the differences with the EWC is that we very much have a public-private focus of the consortium,” says David Magård, EWC Coordinator and senior advisor to the Swedish Business Registry.

The consortium has been focused on the remote use of the wallet, Magård explained during a webinar showcasing the EUDI Wallet pilots’ progress last week.

One of the important aspects of the EUDI Wallet is that the regulation for it is being developed while the pilots are still running. And the regulation, standards and surrounding Europe’s goal to provide each of its residents a digital wallet by 2026 is complex.

At the base of it is the eIDAS regulation but many more moving parts are involved. The Architecture Reference Framework (ARF) is the basis for the reference implementation of the project which enables the pilots. It is currently being viewed as guidance at the consortium even though it’s not mandatory.

“We use it at membership levels, but the real regulation will come through the implementing Acts, where we will be guided much more clearly on what to do with the wallet,” adds Magård.

The main objective of the pilots is to identify the legal, technical or user experience gaps in that complex ecosystem. This is used to provide feedback and potentially influence the implementation guidelines, the reference frameworks and the technical stacks of the EUDI Wallet, according to Laurent Loup, senior product manager at Swiss company Sicpa.

The EWC consortium is divided into four units, including one dedicated to travel and payment use cases.

“Payments are obviously one of the very important mechanisms for ensuring adoption,” says Loup. “So one of the first focuses was on the strong customer authentication feature on the wallets.”

EWC, however, has also found that enabling the EUDI Wallet to integrate with existing payment ecosystems and deliver new payment services is more complex than it sounds.

Many industries require compliance with identification and identity document verification regulations and the consortium has been trying to assess the ecosystem of identity attributes available. The EWC has been testing a travel scenario that has been divided into three phases with the first phase results already available. The second phase is about to be launched, adds Loup.

Another aspect of the EUDI Wallet is organizational digital identity (ODI), sometimes called legal Person Identification Data (LPID) which simply means identity for legal entities. The consortium has been trying to define and develop LPID)attributes and other organizational credentials, notes Andriana Prentza, a professor at the Department of Digital Systems of the University of Piraeus (UPRC).

“It is important to stress here that also for organizations, from large enterprises to SMEs, the need for identity cross border is huge. Therefore we need an interoperable ecosystem,” says Prentza.

To ensure interoperability, the organization has been relying on Request for Comments (RFCs), specifications that take an opinionated stand on the standards and protocols that apply to wallet providers, issuers and verifiers.

Adding a digital identity layer for legal persons provides added value with services such as procurement and verification of attributes needed to conduct business. The consortium has been working with business registries, building on existing infrastructure to introduce new ways of digital authentication. One example that EWC has been piloting is public procurement, including the European single procurement document (ESPD).

The second objective is to deliver credentials related to personal identification data (PID) for natural persons by member states, Prentza adds.

EWC issues more RFCs

The EWC plans to hold more webinars in the future that will break down its work. Meanwhile, the consortium announced last week it has reached a critical milestone in its Large-Scale Pilot by releasing the EWC Request for Comments (RFC) version 2.2, designed to streamline payment processes.

The two RFCs include Payment Wallet Attestation v1.1, i.e. enhancements to the attestation protocols that support wallet-banking integration, particularly in Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), and Payment Data Confirmation v1.0 A brand-new specification providing a standardized approach for wallets to confirm payment data with issuers and relying parties.

Another RFC dedicated to document signing with the EUDI Wallet was released earlier this month.

Article Topics

biometric payments  |  digital ID  |  digital wallets  |  document verification  |  EU  |  EU Digital Identity Wallet  |  EU Digital Identity Wallet Consortium (EWC)  |  identity verification