Dominican Republic pilots VCs for MSMEs, LAC accelerates digital identity integration

The Dominican Republic is testing a verifiable credentials system for micro, small and medium‑sized enterprises (MSMEs).

The pilot is part of the government’s Public Services Transformation Program which aims to streamline company registration, reduce administrative delays. and expand access to public and financial services in a country with significant numbers of unbanked people.

It introduces a digital wallet in which MSMEs can store verifiable credentials such as tax IDs, commercial registry documents and bylaws, and present them to government agencies or banks through selective disclosure.

The goal is to cut processes that currently take weeks and to help formalize a sector that represents 38 percent of GDP, and more than half of total employment, but which remains overwhelmingly informal.

The pilot is governed through a multi‑layered structure that includes an advisory board with international standards bodies, a governance committee made up of Dominican public institutions and the World Bank, and a technical committee responsible for architecture, development and testing.

A staged rollout has been underway since mid‑2025 and culminates in a final product demonstration at the World Bank’s Global Digital Summit in April 2026.

The initiative is led by the Ministry of Public Administration in partnership with the World Bank, the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and MSMEs (MICM), and the Association of Full‑Service Banks of the Dominican Republic (ABA).

Expanding national eIDs across LAC

While the Dominican Republic is using verifiable credentials to target economic formalization and financial inclusion, the project is part of a wider digital transformation across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Governments across the region are working toward interoperable digital identity systems that allow citizens and businesses to use their national eIDs across borders. Central to this is the LAC Digital Citizen initiative.

The regional program is funded by Co‑Develop, the Inter‑American Development Bank and the World Bank, and coordinated by RedGeALC. The initiative aims to build an open‑source digital identity broker enabling mutual recognition of electronic IDs among participating countries.

The broker will rely on federated authentication, open standards and a shared trust framework, drawing on earlier interoperability pilots in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. The initiative opened to all governments in the region, with cohorts of countries joining throughout 2025.

Early participants include Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay, followed by Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Guatemala. Technical working groups are now developing the architecture and use cases spanning migration, trade, education, health and tax administration.

The Dominican Republic’s MSME pilot and the LAC Digital Citizen program are part of The LAC Digital Unit with support from the World Bank. The Centre for Digital Public Infrastructure (CDPI) and RedGeALC previously signed a Letter of Intent to advance the development and implementation of DPI in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the two organizations entering a three-year partnership.

Article Topics

Caribbean  |  Co-Develop  |  cross border identity verification  |  digital company ID  |  digital ID  |  digital wallets  |  Dominican Republic  |  e-ID  |  Latin America  |  The LAC Digital Unit  |  verifiable credentials