Signicat warns lack of clarity, business model could hold back EUDI Wallet benefits

The 2026 deadline for the introduction of the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet is approaching but many questions still remain unanswered: How will governments drive adoption of the wallet, how to define the technical details, and perhaps the most important one — what kind of business models should we expect?

The digital identity wallet ecosystem is complex: The digital IDs will function within mobile apps with national core identity attributes, which can include all sorts of data, known as attestations. The ecosystem will have lots of roles and actors, says Esther Makaay, vice president of digital identity at Signicat.

Although some actors and ecosystems are funded by the government, many of them would benefit from having an income stream. This, however, is hard as the eIDAS legislation focuses on legal and operational matters and does not consider business models, Makaay noted during a recent webinar organized by Dock.

“If we don’t address getting paid and facilitate options for getting paid, we’ll see a short-term model which is minimally viable compliance,” says Makaay. “The wallets will be yet another authentication system used for accessing governmental services and the mandatory SCA acceptance, but commercial parties will not start issuing into the wallets and using them for a longer-term value proposition that we’re all envisioning.”

EUDI Wallet pilot results

During the event, the Norwegian digital ID firm executive did a deep dive into the results of the recently completed EUDI Wallet pilots, presenting use cases such as payments, travel and business wallets explored by the EUDI Wallet Consortium (EWC). Makaay also explored core issues facing digital ID wallets in the future, among which making money is just one.

“There are a lot of requirements on unlinkability and traceability and other privacy-preserving requirements, which makes it really hard to push getting paid for transactions,” she notes. in “There’s also currently no mechanism to support payments”

This question is especially relevant for issuers who provide attestations and data into the wallets but also for trust service providers, because they are, by default, commercial entities which do not work for free, she adds.

Another important issue is driving adoption. According to Signicat’s research, approximately 29 percent of people are likely to use a digital ID wallet in Europe. Despite strong overall support, however, there are large differences between markets, culture and age – older citizens are less likely to adopt the solution.

“We need communication on the benefits of the eIDAS targeted at different use cases, different market sectors, to gain this adoption,” says Mackaay.

Signicat has participated in two Large Scale Pilots (LSPs) designed to test different use cases of the EUDI Wallet. As part of the EWC consortium, which included 80 organizations such as Visa, Digidentity, Amadeus, and Yubico, the firm tested using the wallet in payments, travel and organizational identity.

Payments are important as they can provide high-frequency usage – a person may use their digital ID wallet daily for payment tasks.

“Payments with the EUDI Wallet are possible,” Makaay confirms.

The EWC tested using the wallet as an alternative for Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) method for online payments, as well as for payment initiation, meaning the ID wallet was used as a payment wallet. The consortium’s trial, held in March, involved buying a ferry ticket and receiving a ticket and a receipt within the wallet.

The testing found that a small majority of users preferred the wallet experience over traditional banking authentication through banking apps or by bank cards. However, the experience of buying a ticket through a digital ID wallet was not compared to payment methods such as Apple Pay or Google Pay, Makaay notes.

Potential and disconnect

In the future, a digital ID user may be able to authenticate themselves, present a driving license and pay for services such as car rental. In this scenario, the car rental company or the merchant could also be authenticated in the process.

“This is what they’re working towards, to have this experience embedded,” says Makaay. “Right now, the technology doesn’t fully support it, but they are very confident that this can be done.”

Travel is another popular area for the EUDI Wallet as it can be used in many services, from airlines and ferries to hotels, car rentals, border control and luggage handling.

“If you can share the data from your passports with a hotel for booking or reservations or with an airline, you gain so much in efficiency and data accuracy that it’s really an incredible application of the wallets,” says Makaay.

Border control, however, tends to be a closed ecosystem with little connection with the industry, she adds. The EWC, instead, piloted automation of passenger information with biometric enrollment options at airports. It also tested age verification for receiving discounts on tourist attraction tickets and hotel check-ins.

The last large category that the consortium explored was organizational wallets and organizational identity. The adoption of business wallets could be much faster than individual wallets, because organizations do not have these privacy concerns that natural persons do, according to Makaay.

“There are multiple use cases, and they all involve data access and data sharing. It’s not so much about identification or authentication,” she says.

The EWC tested the wallet in public procurement, know your supplier (KYS) and new business partner onboarding. The process involves identifying other companies, opening a corporate bank account and the exchange of business documents.

We immediately saw a lot of reduction of administrative burdens, because business-to-business and business-to-government right now is very much paper-based,” says Makaay, adding that the result could be diminishing rates of fraud.

Organizational identity is very complicated: A business wallet has different requirements from a natural person’s wallet. At the same time, registering organizations is very different in each country and legislation. For these reasons, the European Commission is releasing separate legislation on business wallets, which is expected next week.

More governance, clarity needed

Signicat has been advocating for specific subsystem governance frameworks. A payments framework, for example, would be more specific than the general eIDAS framework. The EU, however, is still struggling to clarify all the regulations related to the EUDI Wallet.

“If you look at the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), the Digital Services Act, the Digital Market Act, you name them, they overlap, and there’s a lot of unclarity there and a lot of questions,” says Makaay.

The year 2026 will bring further finalization of standards, including the Architecture Reference Framework (ARF), which defines the structural and functional aspects of the EUDI Wallet ecosystem. Several more Implementing Acts are expected, adding more rules on technical specifications, processes and standards.

EU Members are due to provide at least one ID wallet by December 2026. Some countries are already announcing delays, including the Netherlands. Signicat, however, expects that there will be somewhere around 30 to 50 wallets around Europe, although they won’t be fully interoperable.

Meanwhile, more Large Scale Pilots are being deployed to test the EUDI Wallets, including the WE BUILD Consortium and APTITUDE, which includes Signicat.

Article Topics

digital identity  |  digital payments  |  Dock  |  EU Digital Identity Wallet  |  EU Digital Identity Wallet Consortium (EWC)  |  Signicat