GSMA warns private-sector economics could slow EUDI Wallet adoption

The mobile industry is warning that unresolved business, compliance and infrastructure questions could slow private-sector adoption of the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet ecosystem ahead of its planned 2026 rollout.

In a new policy paper, the GSMA calls on European institutions and member states to resolve technical and structural challenges involved in connecting private apps, wallets and services to the EUDI ecosystem.

The organization said the infrastructure must operate under strict privacy and anti-tracking requirements while still allowing commercial services to function at scale.

The mobile operators industry group said issuers, wallet providers, verifiers and other service providers may face significant investment costs tied to trust infrastructure, cybersecurity and eIDAS2 compliance while still being expected to deliver low-friction user experiences and commercially viable services.

Unless private actors can see “viable operating and business models,” investment could stall and adoption could fall short of Europe’s digital identity ambitions, the paper warns. Among these private actors are companies that offer consumer services such as transport, hospitality, payments and loyalty – all of which drive digital ID adoption.​

The most pressing question for European mobile network operators is the role of the MSISDN (Mobile Station International Subscriber Directory Number) as a certified attribute or Verifiable Credential within the eIDAS2 ecosystem. GSMA has argued that mobile operators can play a key role in the eIDAS ecosystem as issuers and verifiers of verifiable credentials, providing the SIM as a secure element, managing digital IDs, and offering commercial services that rely on the EUDI wallet.

For mobile operators, the issue is strategically significant because phone numbers and SIM-linked identities could become reusable trust credentials inside the broader European digital identity ecosystem.

​Although there is clear potential demand for such an attribute, making it available in a “certified, secure, scalable and privacy-preserving” way would require substantial effort, the paper notes.

“Without an appropriate operating and business framework, such deployment would appear difficult to justify or scale in practice,” says GSMA.

The GSMA policy paper recommends dedicated workstreams to examine these issues, as well as testing through the EU’s Large Scale Pilots (LSPs). Several major telecom operators, including Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica, Orange and Vodafone, have already participated in EU large-scale EUDI Wallet pilot programs.

The debate underscores a broader challenge facing Europe’s digital identity ambitions: building a privacy-preserving public identity infrastructure while ensuring enough commercial incentive exists for private-sector participation at continental scale.

The GSMA, which gathers over 1000 mobile operators and businesses, has been involved in developing the Architecture and Reference Framework (ARF) and has published several position papers on the EUDI Wallet and eIDAS framework.

Article Topics

digital ID infrastructure  |  digital wallets  |  eIDAS  |  EU Digital Identity Wallet  |  GSMA