Yubico has joined a European Union large-scale pilot program concerning the proposed EU Digital Identity (EUDI) wallet. This involvement comes after an invitation by an “associate partner” to partake in the EWC pilot, steered by Swedish government agencies and coordinated by the Finnish Ministry of Finance. The pilot aims at developing an organizational wallet enabling shared control among various parties, with a demonstration video showcasing how a passkey for the digital wallet can be stored in Yubico’s USB keys.
The European Parliament’s Industry, Research, and Energy Committee endorsed the EU’s proposed digital identity document in February of this year, clearing the way to a mandate for EU governments to provide citizens with digital wallets. These wallets will enable online identity confirmation without necessitating a commercial eID. This digital wallet is envisioned as an all-encompassing identity gateway granting citizens full control over their personal data. The framework for this initiative is being assembled with the collaboration of private sector partners to develop and test potential technologies for the final product.
In its pilot, Yubico, alongside GUnet (Greek Universities Network) and other networks, endeavors to exhibit an ARF-compliant wallet architecture independent of major phone and platform providers while ensuring security and ease of use. The integration of FIDO-based authentication and encryption, a global open standard, is central to this initiative. FIDO security keys, like those provided by Yubico, play a vital role in securing identity wallets by enabling encryption and decryption of wallet contents.
Yubico aims to assist in creating a wallet conducive for shared control use cases, like organizational or legal person wallets, with a broader vision of fostering more use cases across government and commercial sectors by 2026.
This initiative is seen as a step towards granting EU citizens greater control over their identity, aligning with the European Commission’s goal of reducing non-EU “Big Tech” market dominance. The pilot has already showcased a working demo, with plans to release an alpha version of the wwWallet software in the coming months, compatible with the latest EU wallet Architecture Reference Framework (ARF).
In a parallel development, another large-scale EUDI pilot features numerous companies including the France-based security giant IDEMIA, under the POTENTIAL Consortium. That consortium, comprising 148 participants from 19 EU states and Ukraine, focuses on six EUIDW use cases including “Electronic Government services”, “SIM registration”, and “Electronic Prescription” among others. The pilot seeks to build pioneering use cases for cross-border testing of the digital European Identity.
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November 3, 2023 – by the Mobile ID World Editorial Team
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