Regulation, implications, and use cases
A new era in the use of digital identity management is on the horizon in Europe. The EU Digital Identity Wallets (EUDI Wallet) have to be made available by the EU member states – and many banks, Financial Services Providers (FSPs), and very large online platforms have to accept them.
By December 24, 2026, every EU member state must make at least one certified EUDI Wallet available to its citizens.
Here’s what you need to know about this:
What is the EUDI Wallet?
The wallet is a mobile app that holds a user’s person identification data (PID). It can be extended with additional verifiable attestations of attributes (such as a driving licence or a university degree) and the ability to create qualified electronic signatures for contracts.
The use of the wallet remains voluntary for citizens, but broad adoption and frequent use are expected. Several factors should drive comparatively fast adoption: low acceptance costs for relying parties, EU-wide interoperability and cross-border applicability, improved user experience, and the fact that the wallet is free of charge for citizens.
Adoption will also be pushed from the acceptance side: public administrations must accept the wallet from the start, and private parties that are legally required to use strong user authentication must accept it by December 24, 2027.
So, starting next year, EU citizens are enabled to use their digital wallets across a variety of use cases, with rising demand for scenarios including (but not limited to) identification, SCA, and digital contract signing.
From afar, this looks like a compliance checklist of five to six bullet points, at most.
But there is a version of this story that does not fit into a handful of bullet points, and you should be aware of it to avoid implementation hassle and missing the deadline for regulatory compliance.
Regulation is coming
The deadlines are clear. But what you want to be aware of is EUDI Wallet will attract at least two significant challenges for banks and FSPs:
- The wallet has to work everywhere: A wallet issued in one member state has to work in every other one, too (and this needs to happen as a baseline requirement).
- The old way does not go away: Citizens can use the EUDI Wallet, or they can identify themselves and complete SCA the way they already do today.
The impact
Adding another authentication method is not a quick fix – it is a project with major ramifications. Two stand out:
- IAM implications: Identity and Access Management governance will now move from banks to the EUDI wallets, a shift most legacy systems are not ready for
- Consent management implications: With the EUDI Wallet, citizens decide in their wallet what to disclose – sometimes a single attribute. Consent capture, storage, and audit must handle decisions made outside the bank’s walls.
To avoid noncompliance, banks should identify affected user journeys now and consider an authentication service spanning all 27+ expected wallet providers, cross-border.
What now?
Long before signatures or attestations enter the picture, and before the 2027 deadline nears, banks and FSPs need to address four ultra-common EUDI Wallet use cases for their customers:
- Logging in: Accepting the wallet as a credential that IAM has to trust at the front door
- Changing sensitive data on their account: The authentication will be tied to a specific action, not just a session
- Authorizing a payment: Banks have to recognise authentication supporting dynamic linking and zero tolerance for ambiguity
- Becoming a customer in the first place: Identity verification feeding directly into onboarding and due diligence (CDD/KYC), where consent has to be captured and evidenced correctly the first time
Further out, once that foundation exists, two more capabilities become reachable rather than urgent: signing documents with a qualified electronic signature and issuing bank-backed attestations (such as proof of account ownership, proof of regular income, and similar documents). Both sit naturally on top of infrastructure that is already handling identity and consent properly.
Be prepared before regulation hits: Schedule a free gap analysis with Banfico experts
The “simple” bullet version is not wrong. It is just missing everything that determines whether 2027 goes smoothly or badly: the journeys nobody mapped, the five parallel integrations nobody consolidated, the old authentication flow nobody realized still had to stay standing.
Start with the map. Build or buy & integrate the one service so your institution can accept all EUDI wallets available in the EU.
We have the expertise and the know-how on how to do this. And we would be more than happy to share our tips with you during a free gap analysis meeting.
Schedule it using the button below and stay ahead of the regulatory curve.