Opening a bank account, renting accommodation or registering for a service across Europe typically follows a familiar pattern: submit a photograph of your identity document, provide proof of address, manually re-enter that address, establish another account, then wait days for verification. Cross borders and the friction multiplies—certified translations, notarised copies, or outright rejection because documents from one nation lack recognition elsewhere.
Each interaction demands disclosure far beyond what the transaction requires. Confirming age should not necessitate sharing your full name, address and birth date. Verifying qualifications should not mean handing over your diploma, complete with student number, grades and year of birth. Across the continent, millions of identity documents accumulate in corporate inboxes and databases, often held by organisations with inconsistent security standards, long after they serve any purpose.
The consequences extend beyond inconvenience and privacy concerns. Abandoned transactions, duplicated verification expenses, sluggish customer onboarding, fraud losses and cross-border friction all weigh on local and European economies—precisely the barriers a single market should have eliminated.
By the end of 2026, the European Digital Identity Regulation mandates that all Member States deploy a digital identity wallet for their residents. The deadline is frequently framed as a compliance requirement, yet this framing understates what is genuinely at stake. The European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet represents the most significant infrastructure Europe will construct this decade, presenting a transformational opportunity rather than merely a regulatory burden.
From identification to verification
The Wallet's significance does not rest on creating a smartphone-based copy of an identity document. Instead, it fundamentally changes what individuals must prove. Current identity systems operate through identification: you disclose who you are, and the other party determines whether you meet their requirements. The Wallet operates through verification: you demonstrate the specific fact that matters, nothing else. Two technical approaches enable this shift. Selective disclosure permits a user to share a single attribute from a credential rather than the entire document. Zero-knowledge proof advances further still, enabling someone to prove a specific fact—such as being of legal age, holding a licence, possessing certification or having authorisation—without revealing the underlying information.
The implications run deeper than initially apparent. The system no longer stores the data; the individual does. The service no longer verifies the person; the person proves the fact. Authority transfers to the citizen, and the quantity of personal data flowing through the economy contracts substantially. Critically, credentials within the Wallet remain under user control. Citizens decide when, how and to whom their personal information is shared. The Wallet requires explicit user approval before attributes reach a service provider, guaranteeing transparency and control over every data-sharing moment. The system embraces privacy-by-design principles by restricting disclosure to only the information necessary for a given service, minimising unnecessary personal information exposure.
Dissolving a false trade-off
For twenty years, digital services have operated under a presumption: that security, privacy and performance work against each other. Historically, enhanced security brought increased friction. Greater privacy meant reduced convenience. Improved user experience required collecting additional data.
The Wallet dismantles that equation rather than merely balancing it. Fluidity and security cease being opposing goals: a credential certified upstream by a trusted authority can be verified instantly, whether in person or remotely, without human review. Data that never moves cannot be breached, disclosed or exploited. A verification completing in seconds rather than days eliminates precisely the friction where customers abandon transactions.
Minimised data disclosure. Enhanced assurance. Accelerated transactions. This constitutes the EUDI Wallet's promise: three previously competing objectives now advancing together.
Where the growth comes from
The potential exists. Verified bank account and employment records. Driving licences and educational credentials. Qualified electronic signatures for contracts currently requiring paper or physical presence. Proof that a person holds authority to represent another individual or a company.
For organisations, this translates to reduced verification expenses, quicker employee and customer onboarding, more robust authentication and fewer abandoned journeys. A new employee's qualifications, work authorisation and professional credentials can be confirmed on day one rather than throughout the first month. For critical sectors such as energy, transport, health and defence supply chains, professional credentials carried by individuals enable secure access and movement without the administrative overhead currently required. Eventually, the same approach extends to business wallets that streamline transactions between companies and government bodies.
For the single market, the potential is even more substantial. A company should establish a subsidiary in another Member State without reassembling identical documentation. Trusted, portable, verifiable credentials represent how the single market finally operates at digital speed.
This is where digital sovereignty becomes concrete. By grounding these exchanges in European law, European standards and European identity infrastructure, we establish our own digital trust model—one combining interoperability with privacy, and innovation with democratic control. It could become more than a new service channel; it could form a foundational layer of Europe's digital future and a template for national digital sovereignty. Governments across Africa, Asia and Latin America are developing digital identity systems today, and the Wallet's underlying principles—verification over identification, credentials held by individuals—can extend well beyond Europe. Yet that value travels only when the principles travel too: proportionality, user control, data protection. A Wallet constructed without them would be a different model sharing the same name.
Availability is not yet adoption
None of this materialises automatically. Deploying a Wallet marks a milestone; it is not the destination. Success will likely be measured by whether citizens activate it and use it regularly, and whether public authorities and private organisations integrate it into the services people depend on.
IN Groupe builds these systems—enrolment, credential issuance, cryptography, lifecycle management. Regarding the EUDI Wallet, our current work supports Wallet and credential pilots for public and private issuers across several Member States, including through European large-scale pilot consortia. That experience teaches something no regulation can mandate: trust is won or lost when the system meets the citizen. Four factors are likely to determine the outcome.
First comes enrolment. Member States begin from vastly different starting points. If activating the Wallet or accessing identification data becomes complicated, many users risk disengaging before experiencing any benefit. Straightforward, dependable and accessible onboarding from the initial attempt would eliminate much of that risk.
Second is inclusion. Citizens possess varying levels of digital literacy and technology access. Support, alternative channels and delegation—the capacity for a carer, relative or guardian to act on someone's behalf—matter significantly: without them, digitalisation risks constructing new obstacles precisely for those least able to overcome them.
Third is recourse. Systems malfunction: data gets recorded incorrectly, a credential becomes inoperable, an attribute expires, a device is lost. What builds trust is not error prevention but error correction ease. Redress mechanisms—a straightforward path to challenge and correct inaccurate data, and to restore a lost or compromised Wallet—function best when built into the infrastructure initially.
Fourth is the ecosystem, potentially the most challenging. Adoption will be the genuine success measure. Businesses may hesitate before investing until observing critical user mass, while citizens may hesitate until the Wallet is integrated into services delivering immediate, tangible value. Governments are best positioned to break that deadlock—by enabling high-value public services through the Wallet from launch, and by collaborating with banks, telecommunications operators, transport providers and platforms so that a citizen activating their Wallet discovers something worthwhile to do with it that same week. This demands governments do more than release an application; they must address the collaborative infrastructure required to issue and maintain credentials—an infrastructure that will not sustain itself on initial public funding alone. Governments must educate and encourage citizens to use services that are secure, interoperable and genuinely valuable.
The regulatory framework has created the opportunity. The technology is ready. What remains is the harder, more valuable work: building services that citizens choose to use.
Europe has legislated trust. Now we must earn it. The growth will follow.
