The new urgency - are banks prepared?

 EU has been developing a digital trust infrastructure to support the data-driven economy for many years. Initially focused on enabling digital identification for citizens—especially needed in countries without BankID as infrastructure.  The initiative then evolved into something far more transformative.

It is now very clear that this infrastructure will deliver major advances in productivity, security, service quality, privacy, and the Single Market. The shift is thus from issuing identity-building wallets for citizens to deploying organizational ID-wallets enabling public authorities and enterprises to issue and receive verifiable data at scale—not only to and from individuals, but crucially to each other.

This evolution is being driven by the EWC with Sweden and Finland (MoF & Findynet) leading the way. All the essential elements for exponential adoption—the so-called hockey-stick growth curve—are now in place.

The New Urgency

Several recent developments have increased the urgency of full-scale deployment:

1. Geopolitical tensions demand rapid deployment of existing infrastructure components to enhance EU sovereignty and strengthen the Single Market.

2. A study commissioned by Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs estimates that €84.7 billion annually can be saved through the use of organizational wallets to automate supplier and customer data maintenance. Implementation is a key part of the German government's coalition agenda - now also in relation to AI.

3. The focus on AI is becoming more grounded—shifting from hype to practical applications like data discovery, programming, customer engagement, and innovation through AI-agents.

4. It is now well understood that AI-agents must be anchored in verifiable credentials to be safely employed, empowered, and governed. These agents themselves will require ID-wallets. Legally binding agreements will still need to be signed by natural or legal persons—via their own wallets.

5. Escalating levels of fraud, cybercrime, and denial-of-service attacks targeting banks—often AI-assisted—demand urgent countermeasures. The only sustainable response is automation based on ID-wallets and verified "power-to-act" credentials.

Are the banks prepared?

What was once perceived as merely regulatory compliance (including the operationalization of Article 20 of the GDPR is now being driven by customer expectations and market transformation:

1.  Most private individuals will soon hold interoperable ID-wallets (Denmark launches in early 2026), containing  digital identification, driver’s licenses and a long range of other credentials

2. All corporates and public-sector entities will hold wallets, facilitating machine-readable, real-time credential exchanges.

3. Customers will begin delegating tasks to AI-agents, who will require ID-wallet-based data to act on their behalf in complex life and business scenarios.

4. All customers, suppliers, the public sectors and their AI-agents expect that their general-purpose wallets will be used also when exchanging a wide range of data (also fronting file transfers) with them.

Be at the table - or on the menu - is the question