Episode 049: 9‐19‐2024 Latest News on EU Wallet Initiatives - GluuFederation/identerati-office-hours GitHub Wiki
Title: Latest News on EU Wallet Initiatives
- Host: Mike Schwartz, Founder/CEO Gluu
- Guest: Annet Steenbergen, Advisor, EU Digital Wallet Consortium
- Co-Host: Teemu Kääriäinen, Senior Advisor at the Finnish Ministry of Finance
Description
Currently, the EU Digital Wallet Consortium (EWC) is testing digital wallets across four critical scenarios:
- 🔹 Payment Use Cases
- 🔹 Completing a Flight Online Check-In
- 🔹 Buying a Ticket for a Tourist Tour
- 🔹 Purchasing a Domestic Ferry Ticket
The idea is that citizens will present verifiable credentail presentation from their wallet, presumably online. Where does this effort fit into the other EU initiatives, pilots and organizations. What are the currently anticipated gaps in the technology, business and legal landscape that would present challenges to scale the EU wallet identity ecosystem? And where should identerati go to stay current on progress?
Homework
- Don’t know what a digital wallet is? We’ve got you covered
- Biometrics is Key - The Future of Digital Identity with Annet Steenbergen
- MEPs back plans for an EU-wide digital wallet
Takeaways
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Most member states will probably miss the 2026 EU deadline to issue digital wallets. The EWC is finishing pilot one, with pilots two and three still planned. More data is needed.
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To eliminate the random filing cabinet filled with passport photocopies... we're going to need to make the presentation of identity more usable to normal people. Websites and mobile applications will do much of the heavy lifting in the background. This is just an imaginary example, but what if the Airbnb app is a digital wallet that gathers your travel credentials and verifies that you are the actual person arriving at the hotel? Maybe the Airbnb host doesn't even need to be there if GPS location is confirmed. And Airbnb could disclose the identity of the person to the authorities if necessary.
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Even with the introduction of digital wallets and travel credentials, their usage will be limited to the RP's that trust them. Right now the US TSA trusts mobile drivers licenses for Arizona, presented from an Apple Wallet. Will we need a one-off agreement between each RP and Wallet vendor? With a new three-way trust model--Issuer, Holder, Verifier--we need new public and private sector trust models. It's critical to focus on the RP's, because that's ultimately where the value of a credential is realized.
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IMHO, the biggest consumer value wallets offer in the travel sector is a higher assurance online booking which results in a faster checkin. The potential for seclective disclosure is also promising, although consumers are already pretty cynical about identity fraud risk.