eIDAS 2.0 and the European Digital Identity Wallet

A New Foundation for Digital Identity in Europe

Logging into online services in Europe is a patchwork. Every country has its own national eID system — some excellent, some barely functional, most incompatible with each other. Try using your Dutch DigiD to access a French government service or sign a contract in Germany, and you’ll discover just how fragmented European digital identity remains.

eIDAS 2.0 — the revised Regulation on electronic identification and trust services — is designed to end this fragmentation. It mandates that every EU member state offer its citizens a European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDIW) by 2026, creating a single, interoperable framework for digital identity across the entire bloc.

This isn’t a minor regulatory update. It’s a fundamental restructuring of how Europeans prove who they are online.

What Changed From the Original eIDAS

The original eIDAS regulation, adopted in 2014, established a legal framework for electronic signatures, seals, timestamps, and registered delivery services across the EU. It created the concept of mutual recognition — an electronic signature valid in Belgium should be valid in Portugal.

In practice, the original eIDAS had significant limitations:

Low adoption: Only 14% of EU citizens could use their national eID cross-border
No private sector obligation: Businesses had no requirement to accept eIDs
No wallet concept: Citizens had no unified tool for managing their digital identity
Limited scope: Focused mainly on e-signatures and trust services, not broader identity use cases

eIDAS 2.0 addresses each of these failures.

Key Changes in eIDAS 2.0

Mandatory wallet provision: Every member state must offer a digital identity wallet to its citizens and residents
Private sector acceptance: Large online platforms (those designated as “very large” under the Digital Services Act) must accept the EUDIW for authentication
Verifiable credentials: The wallet can store not just identity data but also diplomas, driving licenses, professional qualifications, and other attestations
Selective disclosure: Citizens can share only the specific attributes needed for a transaction — prove you’re over 18 without revealing your birth date, confirm your professional qualification without sharing your home address
User control: All wallet interactions require explicit user consent, with full transparency about what data is shared and with whom

The European Digital Identity Wallet

The EUDIW is a mobile application — or potentially a hardware token — that stores a citizen’s verified digital identity and associated credentials. Think of it as a digital version of your physical wallet: it holds your ID card, driving license, insurance cards, and professional certificates, but with cryptographic security and fine-grained sharing controls.

How It Works

Issuance: A citizen downloads their member state’s wallet app and verifies their identity through their national system (e.g., video identification, existing eID, or in-person verification)
Credential loading: Government agencies and accredited organizations issue verifiable credentials to the wallet — national ID, driving license, educational diplomas, health insurance cards
Presentation: When a website, app, or physical service requests identity verification, the citizen opens their wallet, reviews exactly what data will be shared, and approves or denies the request
Verification: The relying party cryptographically verifies the credential without needing to contact the issuing authority in real time

Privacy by Design

The EUDIW is built around privacy principles that go significantly beyond current practices:

No central database: There is no EU-wide identity database. Credentials are stored locally on the user’s device
No tracking by issuers: The organization that issues a credential cannot track when or where it is used
Selective disclosure: Share only the minimum data necessary for each transaction
Unlinkability: Transactions at different services cannot be correlated to build a profile of the citizen
User dashboard: Full logs of which services accessed which data, with the ability to revoke access

Impact on Electronic Signatures

The e-signature market is where eIDAS 2.0 has the most immediate commercial impact. The regulation upgrades qualified electronic signatures (QES) from a niche legal tool to a mainstream capability accessible through the wallet.

What Changes for E-Signatures

Under eIDAS 2.0, any citizen with a EUDIW can create qualified electronic signatures — the highest legal standard, equivalent to a handwritten signature — directly from their wallet. Today, obtaining a QES certificate typically requires a dedicated process with a qualified trust service provider. The wallet makes this capability universal.

European E-Signature Providers to Watch

Yousign (France): Already one of Europe’s leading e-signature platforms, Yousign is well-positioned for eIDAS 2.0. They offer legally binding signatures compliant with EU regulations, with data processed exclusively in France. Their integration with the EUDIW ecosystem will make QES accessible to their SMB customer base.

Scrive (Sweden): Scrive specializes in identity-verified e-signatures across the Nordics and broader EU market. Their existing integrations with national eID systems (Swedish BankID, Norwegian BankID, Danish NemID/MitID) give them deep experience in the identity-plus-signature workflow that the EUDIW will standardize.

Docusign’s EU competitors: While Docusign dominates globally, European providers like Yousign, Scrive, and Skribble (Switzerland) offer the structural advantage of EU jurisdiction and native eIDAS compliance. As the EUDIW makes QES more accessible, the competitive gap between these European platforms and US incumbents may narrow significantly.

Implications for Online Authentication

eIDAS 2.0 has the potential to transform how Europeans log into online services, reducing dependence on US-controlled identity providers.

The Problem With Current Authentication

Today, most Europeans authenticate to online services using:

Username and password: Insecure, inconvenient, constantly breached
Social login (Google, Apple, Facebook): Convenient but controlled by US companies, creating surveillance and dependency risks
National eIDs: Secure but limited in scope and cross-border usability

How the EUDIW Changes This

With the EUDIW, citizens gain a government-backed, privacy-preserving authentication method that works across the entire EU. Large online platforms must accept it as a login method. This creates a European alternative to “Sign in with Google” that doesn’t route identity data through US infrastructure.

The implications are significant:

Reduced dependency on US identity providers: No more need to use Google or Apple accounts as your primary online identity
Age verification without data harvesting: Platforms can verify a user’s age through the wallet without collecting birth dates or ID document scans
Know Your Customer (KYC) simplification: Financial services, crypto exchanges, and other regulated platforms can verify customer identity through the wallet, streamlining onboarding
Cross-border service access: A Portuguese citizen can access Estonian e-government services, open a bank account in Germany, or sign a contract in France — all using the same wallet

Timeline and Rollout

The eIDAS 2.0 regulation entered into force in May 2024, with member states required to offer the EUDIW by 2026. The rollout is proceeding through several EU-funded large-scale pilot projects:

EU Digital Identity Wallet Consortium (EWC): Testing travel, payments, and organizational identity
POTENTIAL: Piloting education credentials and professional qualifications
NOBID: Nordic-Baltic consortium testing payments and identity
DC4EU: Focusing on education and social security credentials

Several member states are already in advanced stages. Germany is developing the EUDIW through its Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). France is building on its existing France Identite app. The Netherlands is integrating the wallet with its existing DigiD infrastructure. Estonia, a digital governance pioneer, is adapting its X-Road infrastructure for wallet interoperability.

What This Means for You

For Businesses

If you operate an online service in the EU, prepare for wallet-based authentication. Large platforms will be required to accept the EUDIW, and even smaller businesses will benefit from the simplified identity verification it enables. Start evaluating how your current identity and authentication systems can integrate with the wallet framework.

For Developers

The EUDIW is built on open standards — W3C Verifiable Credentials, ISO/IEC 18013-5 for mobile driving licenses, and new IETF standards for selective disclosure. Familiarize yourself with these specifications now. The reference implementations from the EU-funded pilots are open source and available for testing.

For Citizens

The EUDIW puts you in control of your digital identity in a way that no current system does. When it’s available in your member state, adopt it. Use it to replace social login where possible. Take advantage of selective disclosure to minimize the personal data you share online.

The Bigger Picture

eIDAS 2.0 is more than an identity regulation. It’s a sovereignty play. Today, Europe’s digital identity infrastructure is largely dependent on US companies — Google, Apple, and Meta control the authentication layer for hundreds of millions of Europeans. The EUDIW creates a European-controlled alternative built on European values: privacy by design, user consent, data minimization, and interoperability.

If it succeeds, the European Digital Identity Wallet will be the most significant shift in online identity since the password. And unlike the password, it was designed with your rights in mind from the start.