Identity Week: from European wallet initiatives to practical use in the Netherlands

A lunch to get preparations under way

The development of the European Digital Identity Wallet, the EUDI Wallet, raises a practical question for Dutch service providers: where can digital credentials help their customers and staff? Answering it requires decisions about their own processes and discussions with the parties that issue or use the necessary data. For us, that is a reason to start the conversation now.

On 9 June, we brought together a select group from the financial, insurance and energy sectors at Toet Amsterdam. We deliberately chose a small lunch during Identity Week to make room for connecting European initiatives with the day-to-day work of Dutch organisations.

Payments, trust and adoption formed the agenda in our invitation. Through these topics, we wanted to help participants explore where wallets could become relevant to their own services and what they would need to prepare.

In conversation with France Identité and Sparkassen

Around Identity Week, we spoke with France Identité and Germany’s Sparkassen about digital identity and wallets. Their work offers two concrete perspectives for preparations in the Netherlands.

France Identité is the French government app that allows people to use their identity documents digitally. In banking, EUDIpal, a research project from the digital lab of the German savings banks association DSGV, explores the combination of digital identity and banking.

For Ver.iD, these initiatives make an important question tangible: how can information from a trustworthy source become useful in another organisation’s services? That is also the connection Dutch organisations need to examine when they want to start using wallets.

Why these sectors belong at the same table

Financial institutions, insurers and energy companies each have their own customer processes. They all depend on information on which they can base a decision. A digital credential can help them share and verify that information, provided the recipient understands its source and meaning.

Consider a bank receiving identity data when a customer signs up, or an insurer needing proof of life. In both cases, what happens after the information is shared matters: can the organisation assess it and help the customer move forward?

With the lunch, we wanted to create room to explore these questions across sectors. Because the data often comes from another party, a useful application requires organisations to work through the details together.

Choosing a first application

Our aim during Identity Week was to involve Dutch organisations in these preparations. A workable first step is to choose one customer process and, together with the parties involved, examine which digital credentials are needed, who can issue them and how the recipient assesses them. This makes it possible to identify which step could become simpler for the customer and which agreements are needed.

Would you like to determine which application your organisation could start with? Discuss your question with Ver.iD.