Previous speaker Thomas will be back, next speaker Franziska is already there and the current speaker Anna will participate as well. We will for sure cover more or less the same topic and we also give you the good opportunity to really interact with us. Feel free to scan this beautiful QR code and give us questions. There is no need to run away.
Perfect, so thank you very much first of all in jumping into this really unplanned panel. Usually if some speaker is not participating we know that a bit earlier. This was something like 15 minutes, so as mentioned feel free to ask questions. The topic of the presentation was mainly digitalising social security in Europe and Germany. This is more or less around the EUID wallet, Verifiable Credential and the stuff we already heard or will hear here in the next session. Maybe we start with the first question regarding Franziska. A business wallet, what is this?
Thank you for the invitation, the spontaneous invitation to talk about business wallets. The business wallet regulation is a proposal by the Commission that has been published a few months ago and plans to establish a separate wallet for businesses. If you have heard a couple of presentations over this conference regarding the UDI wallet and the EIDAS2 revision, then you know already that the Commission is really trying to focus on establishing wallets not just for natural entities but also for legal entities.
The business wallet concrete is the proposal to have some sort of software as a service. It will not be like a typical application on the mobile phone like we know it with the UDI wallet. That will be mandatory for all sorts of public administrations and public bodies to establish within their systems. And use basically like a similar concept as we know it from the UDI wallet. So we will have attribute attestations or as you just called it verifiable credentials. It's a similar thing.
And we will have a legal entity identity which will consist of the name and then an identifier that is supposed to be at the moment the EUID. And then for those entities where it doesn't apply, it will be an alternative identifier that will still be regulated in a different implementing act. And the current stage is that this proposal was published. There was some public commentary and the Commission is expecting to have like a final draft towards the end of the year more or less. And then of course everything will start over again.
We will have implementing regulations that will guide the member states on how to actually implement it. We will have standardization efforts going on. And maybe one last thing which is very interesting or for me one of the biggest potentials of the business wallet is the idea to establish a so-called secure communication channel. Which will be like a messaging service. And yeah it will be probably based on the ERDS that we already defined under ETSI which is the electronic registered delivery service.
But the idea is really to have across the whole of Europe and potentially beyond that like a messaging service where public administrations and businesses can share documents, receive documents. And I think this will be quite great because today we have a lot of like separation of documents just via emails. We don't really have like a standardized layer especially in Germany. It's missing completely. So yeah we're not just expecting the business wallet which will actually be like an application in the systems.
But we're also expecting the secure communication channel to really have seamless digital interactions across Europe. Thank you. Then Christoph talking about the difference of natural person wallet and digital person wallet. Absolutely. And thanks for having me here. Franziska already has highlighted a bit on that topic. I believe it is really important to view a natural person wallet and an organizational wallet differently because the use cases might be quite differently. And also the form factor of such a wallet we think at life is quite different.
While for natural persons I think we all have in our mind it will be on the phone because you want to carry it with you. That might look quite different for a business use case where you have probably teams working on certain actions. You have four principles that you need to basically also implement. Signing powers may be separated across multiple people. So we believe this is more a desktop or laptop basically user experience. And that means of course corporate wallets will probably also be centrally provided, cloud provided or on-premise provided.
But not as decentralized as natural person wallets probably will be. As we have also seen with the EUDI wallet presentations this week already which gave quite a good impression on that. And next to the user experience and form factor there is another thing. So the organization of course has probably higher requirements on automation. And I think one of the most valuable use cases for having the European business wallets is that processes can be done much more efficient, much faster and thus also much cheaper. And that is of course only possible by as much automation as possible.
So that's another aspect that I see very important and different from natural person wallets for the business wallets. And in your presentation you already shared a lot about Glyph. What is the role of Glyph in that topic specifically? So Glyph does not deal with natural persons at all. The LEI is the legal entity identifier. And so we only focus on organization use cases. But as I mentioned already in the presentation, organizations of course don't act as human beings or agentic AIs these days that act for organizations. So you need a connection between persons and things and the organization.
And regarding the European business wallet, Franziska already mentioned there are different identifiers in the mix. The LEI is one of the fields that is considered of course to identify organizations, especially outside the European Union. So Glyph is participating in the rebuild large scale pilot, specifically the business use case one, which is about know your customer. And this is also where I see the greatest potential for the business wallet. And now there's also discussions like how is this wallet provided?
The expectation is that in contrast to the EODI wallet, which is state provided, the business wallet will be a private organization provided and there should be competition. And then there's also discussions about which protocols would be supported. And as Glyph we of course advocate that the VLEI would also be one of the supported protocols in a business wallet as we have a global perspective on the topic going beyond the EU borders.
Anna, now you had time to realize that you need to be in the panel as well. Where do you see the greatest potential of the European business wallet regulation?
Well, I think, well, first of all, I'm super glad to hear about this initiative because it's definitely a step forward. I mean, now we're going to establish a European digital identity wallet. And obviously the next one, it should be about how we're actually going to regulate all other wallets that are on the market.
And again, looking into the market right now, what is happening there? We see a lot of things that like a lot of wallet providers, a lot of different parties that want to be in this ecosystem. And they kind of, they act without rules. There is no basically framework that would enable them to work in the same way. Just to define also, as you mentioned, the standards. Based on what standards they are going to operate. And that of course brings, well, very much uncertainty to the end user because, well, there are so many different options and who can I trust?
But it's also about security because how you as an end user understand which one, which of the wallets you can trust. And I really believe that this kind of questions will be addressed by the business wallets and more and even more. Because all the use cases, all the examples that I was giving was actually about not a European digital identity wallet. Because that's where we pretty much understand what it will be. But it was already thinking ahead.
Yeah, okay, what's next? How we're going to leverage that technology to the business cases that we have within organizations. Or potentially we can have communities of certain customers that need their own specific wallet. But it doesn't necessarily need to be a digital European wallet.
And again, I still want to see my diploma in a digital identity wallet. And I believe that this kind of use cases also will be possible sooner, I would say. Anything to add?
Yeah, I mean, I think that almost now seeing the work that has been done over the last years regarding the European digital identity wallet. And we see how complex it is to actually regulate technology. Sometimes I think the potential for business wallets might even be bigger. Because this is where we really need to be able to not just understand but also verify from whom we are receiving documents. There's way more interactions between businesses and public administration. So that me as a citizen that I interact with the public administration doesn't happen too often.
But businesses have to do it on an almost day-to-day basis. And we are getting more and more globalized and digitalized. So of course also like tracking supply chains and following what is actually going on. Where my products are coming from, by whom are they coming from. If they are adhering to all sorts of different standards, especially European standards. It's very important and it's already happening. So we have other projects like the digital product passport. We have other regulations supporting also potentially a business wallet.
So I think that if we manage to in some way harmonize the market in this sense. And have harmonized standards and rules. I think that potentially it could be like a great benefit. Not just for companies but also in like progressing public administrations and their digitalization.
Yeah, good point. And thank you to the audience. We already have three questions. So let's jump into it. Do you think there is a greater need for international interoperability for business wallets. In comparison with a consumer citizen wallet. International means in that case beyond Europe. Super good question. I think the answer is generally yes. I mean without interoperability there is just no interaction. That is not only true for the business to governance use cases that were highlighted just a moment ago. But especially when we're talking business to business.
And I think this is another area for great benefits for organizations. Again to achieve these efficiency and time and thus cost advantages. And I mean without interoperability there is no communication. It just won't happen. Maybe as an addition the regulation specifically also mentions the recognition of third countries. That also might join the ecosystem. And they do plan to also set up like a specific system for it. So whether that be just bilateral agreements. Hopefully not. Hopefully we manage to find some solution for whole of Europe.
And then again because the supply chain nowadays is never or almost never just European. So it doesn't make sense that we have like a proper mechanism. Defined standards. Proper identification and verification of data. And then it stops once we are outside the border. Which is also another thing why to when we talk about how this business identity will be built up. It's very important to really make sure that we also use identifiers that are valid so to say also beyond Europe. And that can be applied to also entities that are not just in the European Union.
So definitely the need is much bigger for the business wallet. Maybe to add to that because I'm a little bit less optimistic. I really don't believe that we will be able to achieve like real interoperability. Who cut this word? Interoperability. Thank you. I mean it's just simply impossible. And I can imagine that there will be some kind of islands of certain companies operating with one standard. And others operating with another standard. What I see is a rising new role actually in all the ecosystem. Which is basically I would call them gateways.
Those who would enable different parties to communicate with each other. Having different protocols and just collecting them all in one place. Then we have a question. This is more or less a mixture to Christoph and Anna. Where is the border between business wallet and personal wallet? Can employees take data from the business wallet for instance qualifications into the personal wallet?
Yeah, I'll just start. From a life perspective I mentioned already we're focusing on organizations. And of course persons but only in their role towards an organization and not natural persons. And of course persons do have attributes in a business wallet that describe their business life. And maybe qualifications that are business relevant and things like that. Probably they will not have like their personal, like really private personal things in there. This is at least not what we see.
And it will be I think a definition of where is the border between what is business relevant, what is not business relevant. Or what also belongs to the organization in the context of this person or what is privately owned by the organization. And maybe to add to that I actually see organizational wallets actually also holding all the information that would allow you to make a decision in terms of access management. For example what type of roles this person has, what type of access restrictions this person has, what work is allowed or not.
And even going farther I can imagine that even like application layer would also probably issue some attributes that would allow to identify what access a person has to certain application. And that all can be handled by organizational wallets. Perfect. And to the audience I see more questions coming in. You also have the option to rate which is most important for you because only five minutes left and then I see a bit more what is the most relevant one. Now I pick one.
As there is no mandatory obligation to issue a business wallet, which actors are likely to emerge as business wallet providers? Good question. Unlike with the UDI wallet there is no obligation to actually provide a wallet. So the member states don't have to prepare like a big project around it. But for already multiple years we have the European large scale pilots going on. It started with the EIDAS 2 regulation where we had four LSPs out of which one was specifically already focusing on business wallets and business identities.
Because it's nothing new like technically the legal identity is already defined in EIDAS 2. So back then they called it the LPIT, so the legal person identification data. In the business wallet regulation proposal they call it now OID, so owners identification data. But it's the same thing and so that's why for many years now already a lot of organizations have been looking into this topic. And now currently within WeBuild where you are also part of, my organization is also part of the WeBuild consortium. We have all sorts of different big companies looking into these topics.
And of course as now the Commission announced that there will be a market we can expect more and more organizations looking into providing business wallets. And then the best one will be chosen most likely. I would add that probably also there is one important driver for this which is business value. And I would expect that in the business wallet the business value is the thing that will motivate organizations to have business wallets and to apply them.
And then coming back to the providers I think that who are able to communicate in the best way what organizations can get out of it will be the most successful. And they can charge for it. I mean this is a big thing like the European Digital Identity Wallet must be free of charge at least for the end user. And for the business context we don't have such obligations so you can charge for it. Then potentially last question. How will delegation binding of roles or entitlements to natural persons work for business wallets? And what about revocation, request approval or financial transactions?
Yeah, good question. I'm just starting with some thoughts. Delegation of authority is a very important use case in the business wallet context of course. Because especially in larger organizations there is of course the official persons. But a CEO cannot basically approve all important transactions. So there is delegation of authority. And there needs to be a way to also represent this in credentials or in attestations in the business wallet to effectively manage this. And I think there is a great opportunity for a business wallet to do this.
Because the speed of issuing and also revoking such rights reliably basically in real time. So that processes consider these rights at all times correctly is also another opportunity for the business wallet compared to today's systems. Where it sometimes takes weeks for such decisions to become applicable.
And yeah, I think there is really a good opportunity for improving this. And as the concept of electronic attestations of attributes is supposed to be mirrored also for the business wallet. We already have the technology behind it and the standards behind it defined. I mean this is the little teaser for the presentation that will come after this panel. So we already have the technical specifications on how to actually build an attestation of attributes. And how to issue it to a wallet, how to present it, how to revoke it.
And the idea for the time being is to mirror this and to have the same types of attestations also in the business wallet. Then there is time for another question and I like this one. Why isn't a wallet a new blockchain? Everyone is talking about it as a great solution still searching for a problem. Not necessarily I would say. I mean I can imagine where it comes from. But I can imagine that there can be kind of comparison between verifiable credentials wallets and blockchain. Because in a way it uses similar concepts. However for the wallets we do see a need.
Because we go outside of the boundaries of our organization. There are so many more B2B use cases. Delegated administration as well. It's one of the very difficult use cases especially for financial organizations.
Partners, contractors and so on. We see there is a lot of potential from the wallets. So I would argue that we are just looking for a problem while we have a solution. I would say that it's natural arising because we have a problem. Absolutely. And thank you very much for jumping in Christoph, Franziska and Anna. And thank you to the audience for these really great questions.
