Nice to see you, nice to be here in Berlin. A lot of interesting stuff happening for sure. I think this is one area and I noted when I walked around here that people are not really aware that there is most likely to be a new regulation in the EU on the wallets and it's going to be a regulation on the business wallets that's going to be built on the EIDAS. So if you haven't heard that, maybe that's a small bomb but it's coming.
And it's, I think, based to part on the work that we are doing and will do in EWC, which is one of the large-scale pilots. Us speaking here, if we can go next, are me, I'm the coordinator of EWC. I work at the Swedish Companies Registration Office under the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Marie?
Yes, very nice to be here. My name is Marie Austenaa. My day job is to lead digital identity for Visa in Europe. But my night job, my side job, so to speak, is to lead the payments domain within the EWC consortium. So I'm very pleased to be here. Indeed. And here we have an overview of EWC, parts of EWC to be honest, because we haven't been able to add all the organizations, all the scenarios and so on. But mainly we work with the use of the EU digital identity wallets in the areas of travel payments and legal person identity. On my right side, you have the business registers that are involved.
And of course, business registers are a key part of this because we issue the legal person identification data, the LPID, to the business wallet or legal person wallet. Or enterprise wallet or corporate wallet, because it has many names. I think business wallet is the one I'll be using here because, again, it's going to be part of a new regulation most likely. We also have the payment task force that is where Marie has her night job and putting a lot of effort, where we have involvement from many actors that works also with the use of payments with the wallets.
As this is a large, yeah, it's actually wrong in there because it's a two-year project with a lot of organizations funded by the EU and the participants with coordination from Sweden and Finland. When we started with this kind of legal person work or business wallet, which is part of the EIDAS regulation, it was kind of clear to us and also many of the companies involved that we speak about EIDAS and the digital wallet. And I was listening to the previous speaker as well, like this is an app, it's in the mobile. But sometimes there's also other use cases, also other needs, other ways to do it.
And those things are something that we try to work with because we tend to forget the organizations a lot. We have been doing that for many years.
Actually, the commission and the members, they try to introduce this legal person model concept, but most of the work, of course, mainly comes from the perspective of a natural person being the holder, having a wallet in an app format. For businesses, that is maybe sometimes interesting. You're a kind of sole entrepreneur. Some differences aren't that big, maybe.
But we can also do a lot of other things, and we're working with scenarios on this legal person wallet only because if you want to have the automated data changes organization to organization, you don't want a person in the middle sitting there and clicking the app because that kind of ruins the whole purpose of ensuring that the data can flow freely, which is also kind of built on the trust ecosystem that we do have with the EIDAS. And what we also have kind of involved here that we speak a lot about is the kind of mutual authentication.
That goes also in the direction with, well, you're a natural person, you have your wallet, you want to interact with an organization. How are you sure that this is actually the organization? This can also be discussed a bit when it comes to AI agents. Are these a proper AI agent that is coming from this organization that it says and so on?
So a lot of things here are actually going into the kind of fraud ecosystem where we can use and leverage the things that's being done by the EIDAS to ensure the integrity of the organizations and also the security for the natural person that they are speaking to the authenticated, verified organization with the verified data. In this, the wallet-to-wallet concept comes in a lot. So that's something that is, to my mind at least, it's being discussed but not that much because, again, you work with someone logging in with their app and so on.
Wallet-to-wallet, it's kind of creating new things that will come up in some of the use cases that we are working with. I'm not going to go into them deeply, but you will find reports on this on our homepage and on LinkedIn. And we also have webinars and seminars. Some of the things haven't been published yet, but will be published at least by end of September. So if you're interested here, you can just go on and you will find us if you just Google EWC wallet. Some of the outcomes is kind of natural to go through, but business wallets cannot exist alone. They are interplay.
But it's also not only representation. This is one thing that's kind of a key concept I think is important to mention again is that it's not only about you representing a company or organization. It's actually the organization that has the possibility to have a business wallet, which from there on can issue attestations. This needs a few technical changes, but server-based and so on. And we're also looking at this very much as kind of being integrated into already existing business systems.
You can add on a trusted entity layer to the identity systems that's already or the business system that's already there. And thereby you can also kind of work with the attestations and so on. Some of the values that we've seen are secure standardized interactions.
Again, leveraging the EIDAS. This is an organization we know is an organization. The organization I can trust thereby I can also use the data. I can also share my data to it much easier and faster using my wallet. We have a lot of work done with post-identification. So this compliance check KYC area, it's also kind of one of the use cases. I worked with these guys in front here, so from Bundesansager. Data accuracy, detection of changes and regulatory compliance. Interesting for us as governments. We want to ensure that we get the right information and it's shared in a good way to us.
Streamlining the processes. And again, trust. We trust we can automate. We've seen in some use cases as KYC for businesses that you can make the process go much, much, much faster. And of course, faster means you save a lot of money.
With that, we also, of course, want to integrate the interesting stuff with payments. So Marie will take some pictures now.
Yeah, no, thank you. So while David has talked a lot about the concept of a business wallet and what that's going to mean for interactions, business to business interactions, and I think that will be profound, those implications. It might take some time, but it'll really have a major improvement in terms of automating and giving assurances to particular transactions. I'll talk more about the intersection between the use of the wallet for consumers and also what that means for businesses and also business to business relations.
So it's a bit of a mix of different use cases, also mentioning some of the results or the deliverables that we've had within the experiences that we've gathered within EWC. So despite the wallet, a business wallet needs to be cloud-based and work on a laptop and so forth. This one is a mobile phone. But the idea is that this wallet can hold a range of attestations, digital proofs.
Of course, your identity, whether that's a business identity, it could also be a power of attorney held in a wallet for a consumer, a natural person that they can act on behalf of a business. It can hold an account number. It can hold a payment card. It can hold an authentication attestation or capability to authenticate a payment transaction and so forth. And that can be applied in a number of different use cases. We just mentioned a few ones here.
One of those use cases that we've explored within EWC and that I'm looking forward to working much more on in the next phase is the ability to open a bank account for a business within another country. This is a very complicated and difficult process. I think it's almost impossible now without flying in person and then signing something at an alterate. So the idea is, can it be as simple as opening something domestically? At least in my home country, Norway, I can do it signing with my digital identity.
So we looked at a combination of KYC and data from business registers that are required to fulfil the AML obligations. There's been a technical pilot between Netherlands and Finland and Germany, and very much including the business registers as well. And one of the key discoverable or topics that were explored is the interactions between a natural person holding or having a power of attorney being able then to sign for the bank to open that bank account. And how is that going to be accepted by the banks and will it satisfy the AML legislation that the bank is subject to?
So there's more work to be done, but there's a really good start at least there to investigate because there's technical questions and the legal questions, let alone the user experience. The other thing that we did that we spent quite a lot of effort on within EWC is the ability to use the EUID wallet to authenticate a payment transaction. EIDAS is pretty clear that the EUID wallet must be an option for the financial services to use to rely on that wallet to authenticate a transaction, a payment transaction.
That's really tricky because you're now at the intersection between PSD2, strong customer authentication requirements under PSD2, that not everybody loves, but it's here and it's made a change in the industry as well, so embrace those, as well as the EIDAS regulation. So the solution that we've come up with is the creation of a specific attestation, an authentication attestation that is issued by the bank, can be done by an intermediary to keep things simple as well, but it's issued by the bank into the wallet and it proves the link between the wallet holder and the account holder for the bank.
And it's an attestation that gives banks the ability to manage the lifecycle of this attestation, what if they're closing the account. It reduces the amount of personal identity that is being used to authenticate a payment transaction. The immediate thinking was, well, why can't you just use the PID? Why can't you just use your identity and the signing capabilities in the wallet to authenticate a payment transaction? Bad idea.
You don't want to share all that data just to make a payment and also the bank needs to have the ability to withdraw, revoke that attestation, as well as making sure that they have issued that attestation under their own control. It needs to be in control of the bank for regulatory reasons as well.
So anyway, so we have that attestation, that authentication attestation, and we've done the technical implementation where this is being used to authenticate payment. Actually, it's a ticket for a ferry company in Greece, fast ferries. So this 25 euro ferry ticket was bought in March 25 as the first time the wallet was used to authenticate a payment transaction. And the bank here, Banca Transilvania, that's a Romanian bank, is the one that accepted that authentication and made integrations into their systems. So that's kind of cool.
The benefits here for the industry is, of course, it's the user experience and the fraud and being able to rely on a capability that everybody has. It's an alternative to the banking app, of course, but there could be cases where this is an easier way of doing the authentication. And when we start looking at how that can link into a business wallet environment, it might be more suitable, it might be very suitable. And we've turned that one around. So here is the bank that's doing the payment authentication.
But there is another scenario, it's a bit complicated slide, sorry, where I as a person want to buy a kitchen knife. And the regulation requires that I need to prove that I'm more than 18 to the merchant. The merchant is a business. In this case, it's the kitchen store that wants to sell me a knife. The best optimal, the best user experience is that they get proof of me being more than 18 and that they can authenticate the payment transaction in the same flow. And this authentication attestation allows them to do that.
The merchant here requests a combined presentation, they request both, yes, are you more than 18? And yes, please do accept to make this payment. And that's presented by the wallet. It's requested by the merchant, presented by the wallet, and the wallet holder agreeing to share that information, as you see in the consent slide. And then the payment transaction and the confirmation of age can then go through. So that's quite a nice benefit, I would say, for the merchant to optimise that user experience and at the same time be compliant with regulation. I think I have one more.
This is the last one. And this is, again, future looking. But these wallets, when they can hold all sorts of attestations would link to government, relationships between governments and business, as well as governments and citizens.
Of course, coming from a payments company, I look at this from a, you know, disbursements, making sure that the governments are paying the right person based on eligibility, based on proofs that they hold, even the right companies, they can, you know, dispersing money for, you know, whatever reasons, but also that they can receive money, whether that's a payment of taxes or VAT or other requirements, or even paying parking fines from a consumer.
But then again, that you get those, the assurances, the reducing of the fraud, the convenience, financial inclusion is an important driver, as well as service on innovation. We see examples of additional security because you can avoid handling cash. We have lots of discussions, I think, here in Germany as well, about giving cash to refugees that has, you know, they are illegible, but handling cash is not the greatest, it's not secure for anyone.
Here, I think looking at the future and the capabilities of the wallet, how that can then improve, you know, those kinds of services. So, that's what I wanted to talk about in terms of use cases. I'm going to hand back to talk about the future.
Yeah, let's see. So, yeah, as I said, we will work more with these use cases and, of course, the foundational parts of what is actually a business wallet, how can it be used, who will use it, who will use it in what way. And I think there are, again, numerous different angles to it. But we have been awarded for a second round.
So, EWC, but also we will take work done from other consortias. We will continue the work. And now it's going to be very much more focused on the business wallets and, of course, wallet for payment, which will be integrated. And here we can see the use cases.
Again, working more with the know-your-supplier, know-your-businesses. How do we ensure that you actually onboard a business that is legitimate and also have the necessary credentials for whatever one of those certificates for plumbing or whatever. Create a company branch or something. A company in Sweden, I want to create a company in Germany. How do you do it with the use of the wallet? Digital smooth fraud prevention, so on. One interesting thing is, of course, that the tax parts also kind of come in here. We have the payment, we have tax, we have e-invoices and so on.
Kind of building that ecosystem where we can use that stations to ensure that the integrity of the data, but also, of course, in a standardized format that is available and easy to use for. Micro-credentials, also kind of cool. A case where you have earned a skill at an employer and the employer then awards you that skill as an attestation. You can then show it to another employer and say, well, I know how to program these tools, so you can then hire me.
OTS, that's like the single digital gateway. Another kind of infrastructure. But also these things that you kind of get into other services, such as the authentication access for transport. I've got reports involved in this. How do they know that they are actually onboarding the right organization? Same thing really with the data spaces. We want to ensure that the right organizations are there, that they are verified, they have all the attestations, the accreditations and so on.
And then, Marie, you want to say something on the payment side there? Yeah, I can just add.
So, we realize there's a lot of work still to be done regarding how you use a wallet for payment. We'll focus much more on the business side of this as well.
So, when I talk about corporate banking, that means opening a bank account in a foreign country. We'll continue that work. Issuing attestations, being able to issue an IBAN attestation to a wallet so that the business can use that onboard as a supplier, so you know that the attestation actually came from your bank. Business payments, very much around, of course, disbursements.
Also, e-invoicing, e-receipts. So, if we do the invoicing in the middle work package, we'll take the invoicing and execute the payment and then issue a receipt on that basis. Then we need to know that the invoice was sent from the right company with the right account number. There's no one in the middle here. And it also needs to satisfy the new directives on digital invoicing. And then for consumer payments, we'll take that one step further, look much more into payment initiation, but also peer-to-peer payments.
And, of course, account opening as well, cross-border for citizens, for consumers. Yeah, so what happens next? We will wrap up the EWC. You'll find all the liverpuss reports. The business regulation will come. Business wallet regulation, I think. And then we start a rebuild.
So, we're starting in September. Please follow us. We'll have a webpage and newsletters and so on. It's a huge, huge consortium of over 200 participants.
So, it's going to be interesting, exciting, I think. And we do a lot of cool things with business wallets.
So, thank you very much.
