New EU Large Scale Pilots launch to develop the digital identity wallet ecosystem

A pair of EU co-funded Large Scale Pilots have started development on making the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet ecosystem secure and interoperable.

The new pilots — run by consortia APTITUDE and WE BUILD — bring together EU member states, public authorities, SMEs, major European enterprises, and international digital identity experts to test and refine wallet functionality across diverse use cases.

The APTITUDE Consortium will explore applications ranging from travel credentials to mobile vehicle registration certificates, and demonstrate the interoperability, usability and scalability of EUDI Wallets while actively promoting its benefits.

The WE BUILD Consortium will focus on streamlining business and payment interactions across business-to-business (B2B), business-to-government (B2G), and business-to-consumer (B2C) domains.

More information on these consortia are yet to be published. The European Union is chasing deadlines for its digital identity wallet — and Fime’s Steve Pannifer recently sat down with Biometric Update, discussing compliance and what we know about “aggressive” EUDI timelines.

Pannifer, SVP of digital identity at Fime, says the complexity of what’s proposed makes the timelines look mighty tight. “It’s not just about doing a wallet. It’s doing a wallet, and having it work within that emerging ecosystem,” he said. Pannifer has more to say, including insights on adoption and payment models, on the Biometric Update podcast here.

A total of six Large Scale Pilot projects are testing the EUDI Wallet before it’s rolled out to member states, with two currently active (the ones above) and four having completed their work. By December 2026, member states are mandated to make wallets available to their citizens and businesses.

More than 11 everyday use cases are being tested by the Large Scale Pilots for the EUDI Wallet. Across the 26 EU member states, as well as Norway, Iceland and Ukraine, 550 private companies and public authorities are involved in the Large Scale Pilots.

To support collaboration and technical alignment, the European Commission will host a targeted event in Brussels from 10 to 12 December. The three-day gathering will offer wallet developers and service providers from national teams the opportunity to conduct peer-to-peer interoperability tests with counterparts from other Member States.

UX and accessibility specialists will convene to discuss shared design guidelines for EUDI Wallets, while communications experts from national public administrations will collaborate on rollout strategies alongside EU Commission representatives. Members of the Large Scale Pilots will also present demonstrations of specific wallet use cases developed under their grant agreements.

The event will take place in central Brussels with attendance restricted to current participants in the EUDI Wallet initiative, including representatives of national public administrations, their service providers, and recipients of official EU grants for wallet piloting. Interested participants are invited to complete a short registration form to help organizers tailor the programme to attendee needs. More info can be found here.

Procivis participating in WE BUILD

Participants in the business-centric pilot run by WE BUILD will include Procivis, which announced its role as a beneficiary partner in the consortium on Tuesday. The company is also a technical provider for WE BUILD.

The Orell Füssli subsidiary says its technology for eIDAS 2.0 digital identities and wallets is already production-ready, and will be applied to use cases for businesses’ wallets and digital payments.

“WE BUILD is a milestone for the digital economy in Europe. We are looking forward to contributing with our production-ready, eIDAS 2.0 compliant technology Procivis One to enable an interoperable ecosystem for governments and businesses,“ says Désirée Heutschi, Co-CEO of Procivis.

WE BUILD is an acronym for “Wallet Ecosystem Building in Large-scale Deployments.”

Article Topics

APTITUDE consortium  |  digital identity  |  digital wallets  |  EU Digital Identity Wallet  |  interoperability  |  pilot project  |  Procivis  |  WE BUILD consortium