Cloud Signature Consortium sees decade of work reflected in EUDI Wallet rollout

The arrival of a European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet has been hailed as one of the most ambitious digital infrastructure projects in European history. The wallet promises to bring digital credentials, identity verification and legally recognized electronic signatures together in a single mobile application. Among its most significant capabilities is the ability for citizens to remotely sign documents and contracts using qualified electronic signatures.

The development represents a significant shift for Europe’s digital identity ecosystem. While electronic signatures have long been available through commercial platforms and specialized trust service providers, the EUDI Wallet is expected to make qualified electronic signatures available to hundreds of millions of citizens through a government-backed digital identity framework.

“We know that whatever technological evolution, people will need to sign documents,” says Viky Manaila, president of the Cloud Signature Consortium (CSC). “This will not change anytime soon.”

The technology behind today’s electronic signatures has existed for years, but access was largely mediated through proprietary platforms such as DocuSign and Adobe.

In 2016, however, industry players formed the Cloud Signature Consortium and began developing specifications for an open-source API that any provider could adopt. The CSC, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, was founded as a nonprofit organization focused on e-signature standards.

Manaila tells Biometric Update that the organization worked to align the specifications with how the market wanted to use signatures – whether from mobile devices, computers, tablets or other devices. Now the same standards are enabling digital identity wallets to generate signatures, potentially placing qualified electronic signatures in every European’s pocket.

In 2024, the CSC standard was referenced in the first batch of eIDAS 2.0 Implementing Acts, meaning that any signing application that interacts with the wallet must be compliant with these rules.

“Before, a user needed to have a digital certificate issued by a provider; for that, he must undergo an identity proofing process that was cumbersome, complicated, and took time,”  says Manaila. “Now we are able to generate signatures on the fly, meaning that the moment the user needs to sign a document, the certificate will be instantly issued, and the verification of the identity is based on the ID.”

The upcoming EUDI Wallet will allow every EU citizen and resident to create a Qualified Electronic Signature (QES). A QES is the highest level of electronic signature, possessing the same legal validity as a handwritten signature across all 27 EU Member States.

“We see that this is actually what people need,” says Manaila. “They should be able to do whatever they need at a fingertip distance.”

The CSC is not just focused on Europe. The organization now has more than 80 members in over 40 countries and is also collaborating with OpenID Foundation and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), which has incorporated its specifications into the standard for remote digital signatures (ETSI TS 119 432).

Manaila notes that different countries are taking different approaches to digital ID wallets and e-signatures. The organization is trying to explain to policymakers that the EU should not be the only one adopting the wallet approach.

“Wallet-based signing can deliver value in multiple scenarios, not only for signing documents, but also for sealing,” she notes.

The next frontier may be organizational identity rather than individual identity. Unlike qualified electronic signatures, which identify natural persons, electronic seals are used to authenticate organizations and legal entities. Alongside the citizen EUDI Wallet, the EU is developing an organizational wallet, the European Business Wallet, designed for companies, institutions, and public bodies. The CSC task is to support e-sealing and the Business Wallet alongside personal signing.

As Trust Services Director for Intesa Group, Manaila is participating in the WE BUILD consortium, which is testing signing and sealing as part of EUDI Wallet large-scale pilots (LSPs).

Both CSC and WE BUILD are also preparing for the future impact of AI agents on identity and trust, including e-signatures.

“AI agents will be tasked to generate different documents or to sign low-risk documents like terms and conditions,” says Manaila. The next challenge, she says, will be establishing how AI agents can be identified, authorized and trusted to act on behalf of individuals and organizations.

Article Topics

Cloud Signature Consortium  |  digital identity  |  digital wallets  |  e-signature standards  |  electronic-signature  |  ETSI TS 119 432  |  EU Digital Identity Wallet  |  Viky Manaila