European Digital Identity Wallet: pilot project awarded

The European Commission recently awarded the EU Digital Identity Wallet (EWC) consortium a pilot project on the future European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI).

According to the eIDAS 2.0 regulation, all European citizens will have to have these EUDIs by 2024. On December 6, 2022, the European Union approved the legal framework for their deployment.

The EWC consortium is led by the Swedish and Finnish governments and includes some 50 organizations. Its members include governments, experts from the travel and payment industries, and digital identity specialists. In 2023, the EWC will study the application of EUDI to travel.

« The EUDI wallet will transform the lives of European citizens. It will allow them to prove their identity online with greater security and privacy, and to take control of the distribution of their personal information, » said Andrew Tobin, European sales director at Avast. As a reminder, the Czech cybersecurity company is a member of the EWC executive team.

« By focusing on travel for the EWC pilot, we will show how to simplify often tedious transactions and make them more secure for both users and travel organizations, » he adds.

EWC wants to identify barriers and enablers to the adoption of the EUDI portfolio. To do so, the consortium will use scenarios based on concrete cases from digital everyday life. Numerous end users throughout Europe will be invited to test these scenarios.

« After social media and messaging, e-commerce is the second largest use of the Internet. By demonstrating the power of digital wallets for travel, we will be able to transfer these learnings to other types of e-commerce, such as online shopping, » projects Andrew Tobin.