The European Commission has selected four proposals for large-scale pilot programmes to test the European Digital Identity Wallet across multiple use cases, including in-store, online and cross-border payments, travel, ecommerce, access to services and credential verification.

Three international consortia of public and private sector organisations — Nordic-Baltic eID Project (Nobid), the European Digital Identity Wallet Consortium (EWC) and Digital Credentials for Europe (DC4EU) — have confirmed that their proposals have been accepted by the EC and have announced plans for trials that are due to begin early next year.

The pilot proposed by Nobid “focuses on payments, one of the priority use cases in the EU’s digital ID wallet vision”, the consortium of government agencies, financial institutions, payments networks and technology providers from Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Latvia and Norway explains.

“Its implementation will leverage existing payment infrastructure to enable payment issuance, instant payments, account-to-account transfers and payment acceptance both in-store and online.”

The proposal put forward by EWC — a partnership of more than 40 organisations across all EU member states — “is focused on the use of the EU Digital Identity Wallet in the context of travel — such as providing passenger information, buying goods and services, and trusted business-to-business interactions”, the consortium says.

It will pilot “usage scenarios alongside complete travel journeys from booking of flights, hotels etc to check-in, shopping and payment all across Europe” and will demonstrate how “eIDAS will transform the safety, security and convenience of ecommerce with a context that is familiar to huge numbers of European citizens”, the EWC adds.

DC4EU, the third consortium to confirm that the EC has accepted its proposal, will trial the European Digital Identity Wallet in “a set of use cases with cross-border scenarios” in order to verify that it is “compatible with the business requirements for educational credentials and professional qualifications and social security”. It will also test its “identity and signature capabilities” in “cross-multiprotocol scenarios”.

The European Union revealed in November that it is preparing to go live with the European Digital Identity Wallet in 2024 and the European Council approved a proposed legislative framework for issuance and usage of the wallet earlier this month.

Nobid first announced details of its proposal for a large-scale pilot in September.

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