From Vision to Value: EUDI Wallet and EU Business Wallet at the Core

Thank you for having us and giving us the opportunity to talk about WE BUILD, WE BUILD and its members and its mission and what we're up to do. And first of all, I'm indeed Joost Fleuren. I work for the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce. I'm here with Rob Brand and together with Giulio from the Italian Department of Digitalization. We are the three coordinators of WE BUILD. And so what is WE BUILD? I would say it's quite a gathering. It's more than the three of us.

It's a total of more than 750 people currently collaborating on making the, I would say, making the identity wallets work, the natural person wallet and the new European business wallet. And yeah, where are the 750 people coming from? That's from these organizations. Quite a few, we're even expanding. And quite some German organizations as well. Deutsche Bank, T-Systems, Deutsche Bahn and last but not least also Bundesanzeiger are amongst them.

And yeah, together we're shaping this consortium and trying to make the identity wallets work. And I already mentioned Bundesanzeiger, that's a trade register, just like the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce. We have a total of 10 trade registers being part of WE BUILD from the beginning. And that kind of also underscores our commitment to the business aspect and the business use cases and to make the wallets work for businesses. Next to that, of course, the technology providers, identity service providers, but most importantly also the relying parties.

And for usage, you need users and you need relying parties. So they are the center of WE BUILD, I would say. And we did put them at the center from the beginning onwards. The WE BUILD consortium is use case driven. That's also how we take our decisions as a consortium, what to prioritize. And the use cases are spread over three domains, business, payments and supply chain. So what are these use cases about? In general, identifying a person, identifying a company and also sharing verified attributes. For a person, for example, I am allowed to act on behalf of a company.

For a company, for example, these persons are allowed to act on behalf of me. But also a lot of other things.

Yeah, I see my time is already up. So the use case driven, use case at the heart, the technology is there to serve and there's also a road map to get to that technology. And that's also underpinned by kind of the legal side of things. And now I hand it over to my fellow coordinator, Rob.

Yeah, thank you. Here are some of the characteristics of WE BUILD. First of all, we started off with 60 proposals for use cases and we had to decide on which one to use because 60 is a lot for a large scale pilot. And we finally made a cut where we said these are meaningful for businesses and payments. So that is one thing. For some of them, we chose the EUDI wallet because it was known at that time. But we also already started from the EWC consortium with use cases with something different, not a legal person wallet, but well, actually, it is more like a business wallet as it is seen today.

So we have some business wallet prototypes also in the use cases where we could experiment with that one. It was required for this large scale pilot that we will go into pre-production, but the commission said we would really appreciate if you can also go into production because, of course, next year, Member States should be able to issue natural person wallets. So we have in our consortium general capabilities where every use case needs to make use of. And one of the products that we already have is the architecture framework.

So we have an architecture blueprint that is produced also in GitHub and where you can see which involves all the choices that we think are essential in making our consortium work. But they can also be useful, of course, if you have your own business or natural person wallet. We also include in our consortium something called the ecosystem forum because we are also trying to reach out to the community, to everybody outside we build, because we think that what we are doing can be useful in every other aspect and other Member States and other organizations that are not involved.

So we try to involve people in the ecosystem forum. One of the things that is important here is we have a very active and lively payment interest group that was also taken over from the EWC consortium, where a lot of banks and other financial institutions are involved. Then what is very interesting here, and that is because of the business wallet regulation, which is also on the next slide, is that the commission required us to align with them on a monthly basis.

So DigiConnect, which is working on the business wallet, is aligning with Yoast, me and Julio every month and they are asking questions about the use cases, how we are going to use the business wallet or prototypes of it. And on the other hand, we are giving them information on what we are doing.

So we have a very good relationship with the commission and one of the special topics, people that know the business wallet regulation, there's a special place for the qualified electronic register delivery service, which is a new service and it is a mandatory communication channel for the European business wallet. So they are also trying to see how we are using it in our use cases. So it is a very nice setup that we are not only working for ourselves, but the commission is also aligning to us. Here's a comparison of where we are and also the relationship with the business wallet regulation.

Of course, we started two years ago. Already in May 2024, we started the ideas for this new consortium. And by then, there was no talk about the business wallet. The competitiveness compass appeared only in January 2025 and the commission started working on a business wallet even a month later. So we were ahead of the business wallet regulation. But of course, like I say, the commission says you are implementing what we are trying to do in our law. So that's why we are aligning with them. And where you can see is we already have that architecture blueprint before the implementing XR ready.

So we are not using the business wallet, but we are using prototypes and concepts that could be used in the business wallet. Well, we will start testing and piloting at the end of this year, probably in November, doing that for half a year till June 2027. So hopefully, we can go as far as pre-production and hopefully some little bit like production with our use cases. So we are preparing right now for those use cases. At the same time, the commission is working and right now in the council, we are working on the legislative process for the business wallet, which has an enormous tempo.

What we see is that probably within a year after the publication of the draft proposal. So later this year, October, maybe November, there will be a law, a business wallet regulation and it will be published probably in November, but definitely before Christmas as it looks like right now. And because they are already working on implementing XR, some of them are necessary in order to have the requirements for the business wallet, for the QERDS. So there are important implementing XR to finish. It would not be strange to see them finished in April. So right in between our pre-production pilots.

So we will see how we can make use of those. So also part of the message that we are bringing here is because of those implementing X being ready next year, it could be well in a year and a couple of months that the first business wallet providers are ready to issue business wallets. And then of course, it will be up to the ecosystem to use them. But from the technical perspective, and also because we see that a lot of those potential issuers of providers of business wallets are in WeBuild, we think that they will be ready in a year and a couple of months.

So that means that it will come very close to the business wallet, maybe at the same tempo of implementation as the natural person wallet. And we are doing that within WeBuild both.

Well, then there is only a two year period for the member states implementation concerning the mandatory acceptance of business wallets. And well, that's also where the relying parties come into play into place.

And well, of course, that's not a part of WeBuild. But we hope through involving the ecosystem forum in what we are doing, that maybe some member states, but also the private organizations that show much interest in the use cases for the business wallet, will implement business wallets into their processes. So that is, I think, the timelines that we have. I put them in the first business wallet in quarter three of 2027. And it wouldn't be strange, like I say, that they will be a little bit earlier than that even.

So in WeBuild, of the 13 use cases Joost showed, probably five or so will use the prototype of the business wallet and the others will use the natural person wallet. Some will even use a combination of the prototype of a business wallet and a natural person wallet depending on the use case. But in fact, what is important, we are doing very important use cases for businesses and for payments.

Now, I work for the Ministry of Economic Affairs in the Netherlands. And because we see that those business wallets come very close and are very important also for the digital economy, it will save millions, even billions of euros. That's what we hear from the businesses. We are already trying to implement it because one year is a very short term. And how we are doing that?

Well, first of all, we have an identification means for businesses at the level high and that can be used in order to onboard on business wallets. But also if you want to access a business wallet as an employee of a company. So that is one of the helps that we have. So starting from there, and also from the knowledge that we gain from WeBuild, we are trying to mobilize the authentic sources. Because an empty wallet contains no data that you can share. And then nobody will want to use it. So where are the most important authentic registers? It starts with the business registers.

And 10 of those are already in WeBuild, preparing for that phase of going into production. So that is very important. It starts with them. They issue the number for businesses in the wallets and also the company certificates and the UBOs, etc. So they are very important. So that's what we're going to do. But also the tax authority, which is very important for a lot of financial reports that you need into a business wallet to share. So the tax authority, we are doing a tax use case in WeBuild as well.

Tax authorities can start also by the experience of WeBuild, but especially in the Netherlands, we are trying to motivate them to be on board. That's good.

Banks, because you probably will need an IBAN in your business wallet. So banks are an important organization to share their data to business wallets. And then we also have a very good contact with our notary, because you can also share a digital X, which could be necessary when you want to start a new company or a new branch or have other documents that you want to share there. So those are a start. And we are communicating in the Netherlands. We are cooperating with them. Some of them are in WeBuild, because that's where it starts. It starts with the authentic sources.

And that would be also what I want to say to other member states if they try to start off with business wallets or with natural person wallets for that matter, is try to get your authentic sources involved. So that's one thing that we are doing. And then we are trying to bring supply and demand together. Demand being the relying parties that have their processes and they need data, because otherwise they won't go on board. And what we see in WeBuild, we have the KYC use case, which is being used by e-commerce, by banks, and they say, OK, we need those data.

And in WeBuild, we are trying to get the authentic sources to provide those data. But of course, in a production situation, you also need to have that process. What do you need as data as a relying party in order to change your process and accept the business wallet? Then we need to get those data from the authentic sources. And if we identify those processes, it will become more easy for other process owners to be involved there as well, because they already have the data. So we start in getting the most important use cases like KYC and also like e-procurement, maybe even e-invoicing.

What do you need in order to use a business wallet? And then get the authentic sources to comply there as well. So that's what we are doing. And that means that we do a lot of communication. We don't do it in WeBuild only, but also on a national basis.

Next week, we are giving a symposium on business wallets within the Netherlands for authentic sources, for relying parties, government organizations, etc., just to inform them.

Well, probably within a year and a couple of months, you already have them. So prepare for that. So that's what we do. And most important, I think also software vendors, because a lot of the medium and small enterprises don't share data themselves, but they use software vendors for them. And so that means that they also need to implement something like a business wallet.

Yeah, maybe here, maybe you can, these are the use cases as well, where we think that there is a value in the business wallet. Well, there's value for sure. And if you would ask me to kind of pinpoint the first use cases, that's obviously KYC. For the KYC process, identifying an organization, making sure that you know who is who. And I think most important, complying to the regulation of that perspective. That's one of the drives you see also for new relying parties signing up, because as I told you, we have 200 organizations strong, the consortium.

It did expand with quite a few recently, and that's mainly because of relying parties seeking to use the business wallet for, on one hand, their compliance process, and on the other hand, making the compliance process also like a strategic benefit, that you do that better than the other organizations. So that's one.

Yeah, that's one. And maybe to add, these are also the use cases that we are doing in WeBuild in a way. One of them, the public procurement, where the DG Grow, the commission part that is responsible for public procurement, says that the business wallet will be the game changer for e-procurement. And that is why we are doing it like a satellite, partly outside of WeBuild, doing a proof of concept this year, where we want to showcase how the business wallet will be used in public procurement, and that can be really interesting to see what will happen there.

And I think also the digital product passport, where the business wallet will be the carrier probably of those passports, which I think also some German organizations are working on because of the importance to the auto industry, especially for the batteries, where you need the digital product passports. So we see that there are really valuable use cases in a practical situation in using European business wallets. And I have very good news, because if you want to learn more, there are also opportunities to learn more, and that's in a very straightforward manner.

You can go to a website, you learn more about all these use cases, all these applications, all the organizations being part of WeBuild and why they are part of WeBuild, and that's on one hand bracing for the new legislation, making sure you're compliant, and that's for example a bank from different perspectives, on one hand the KYC process, on the other hand the strong customer authentication in the payment part, and it's not just about compliance, it's also about innovation and making sure you can develop new services based on the wallet.

Secondly, you can also go to the website and sign up for a newsletter. Of course we have an internal newsletter, we also have a newsletter for external organizations. People who are not part of WeBuild, but who want to learn and want to know more. So please do sign up, we have already over 400 people who signed up for the newsletter, and in case if you're a relying party and you're keen in experiencing the business world or the natural person world, for example KYC processes, identifying your customers, there's always an opportunity to join.

Yeah, I think that's it. Is that it? If that's not it, you can go to the website and sign up. Thank you. Well there you go, a nice call to action for all of you. In the interest of time, just a quick question, will a business wallet be mandatory for member states or is it kind of like, you know, optional?

No, like the natural person wallet, it's optional to have one, but for member states, public sector bodies, it is mandatory to accept it. Not for private organizations, the reasoning being that it will be an automatic, direct advantage and money saver, so you don't need to motivate private organizations to accept the business wallet, that's the idea behind it. So it will be mandatory acceptance by public sector bodies. Thank you very much. Once again, give it up for Rob Brunt and Joost Vleuren.