This is the first prototype of a digital wallet for identification and payments from the EU mobile

In September 2022, the European Union reported that six countries (Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Latvia and Norway) would form a multinational consortium of trusted identity leaders in Europe, NOBID.

This refers to the Nordic-Baltic electronic identification project, a pilot payment project that has received funding from the European Commission’s DIGITAL Program and will start in March 2023.

We talk about a digital wallet identity of the EU in a project led by its president, Ursula Von der Leyen, whose objective is to make possible a digital identification system that is unified in Europe for your mobile.

This EU Digital Identity Wallet (European Digital Identity Wallet) will allow European citizens securely store your documents and personal information in one app (also known as a wallet).

Of course, These documents and information go far beyond identity documents (DNI) or people’s driving licenses, but also medical histories, bank cards or even university degrees. In short, this data will be able to create an identity digital of the European Union for each citizen, which can be used in all Member States.

This ultimately seeks to simplify the way in which people identify themselves in all aspects of their lives in any EU country, making all kinds of processes and life in general much easier and simplerfrom a mobile.

“Its implementation will take advantage of the existing payment infrastructure to allow the issuance of payments, instant payments, transfers from account to account and the acceptance of payments both in stores and online”, they explain. The European Union revealed in November last year that is preparing to launch the EU Digital Identity Wallet or Wallet in 2024.

What are your goals and how will this development affect EU citizens?

The proposal submitted by the EWC, an association of more than 40 organizations from all EU Member States “focuses on the use of digital wallet of identity in the context of travel, such as the provision of information to passengers, the purchase of goods and services and trust interactions between businesses”says the consortium.

The aim of the European digital identity wallets is to simplify transactions for citizens and public administrations and perform them online without any problem.

Some examples of this are: opening a bank account with an electronic ID, enrolling in a school, accessing different medical systems in any of the EU member states… These are just some examples of the tasks that will be possible to perform digitally when you implement the Digital Identity of the European Commission.

“The payments use case is recognized as a key use case based on several reasons, one of which is the possible extension to the digital euro”they add.

This novelty of payments has the participation of several European banksincluding: DSGV in Germany, DNB and BankID in Norway, Nets in Denmark, Intesa Sanpaolo, PagoPA and ABILab in Italy and Greiðsluveitan in Iceland.

“The solution will be based on the provisions inherent in the wallet to carry out strong customer authentication as well as transaction linking, fully meeting the requirements of the European regulation on electronic payment services. Various modalities are expected to be supported including QR codes, push notifications, and deep linking”they explain from the web.

As explained in other media, that we are talking about a solution that originates in the countries of Europe mentioned at the beginning, it is not a coincidence. And it is that, just to give an example, some of them, such as Norway, already have extensive experience in the administrative digitization sector (90% of its population already uses the electronic DNI).

“All countries in our consortium have well-established digital infrastructures. A large majority of the population in most of the participating countries already benefits from electronic identification and payment solutions on a daily basis,” They comment on their website.

Of course this is a big first step and it’s just one of the examples of how a strong and secure digital identity can be used that complies with EU regulations, such as eIDAS (European Digital Identification Regulation) and AML (Anti Money Laundering or fight against money laundering).