Beyond accepting digital identity: Why trust and interoperability come next

• Digital identity adoption is accelerating globally, but national schemes, digital wallets and private-sector identity solutions create an increasingly diverse landscape.
• The next challenge is not simply accepting digital credentials, but determining whether they can be trusted and are fit for purpose.
• Interoperability, trust frameworks and a flexible strategy will be critical to scaling and addressing risk.

Digital identity adoption is accelerating, but simply being able to accept a digital credential is not enough. Organisations also need to understand whether that credential can be trusted and whether it provides the right level of assurance for the intended use.

In our previous article, we explored the European Digital Identity (EUDI) framework and what it means for businesses. While EUDI represents a significant milestone, it is only one part of a broader transformation in digital identity. As digital identity schemes and reusable credentials become more widely available, the challenge is increasingly one of navigating a growing and more diverse identity ecosystem.

Digital identity is becoming an important component of national digital infrastructure. Public- and private-sector organisations around the world are investing heavily in digital identity programmes, giving individuals new ways to prove who they are online.

However, digital identity is not developing through a single global framework. The World Bank’s 2025 ID4D Global Dataset reports that 89 countries have their own government-recognised digital identity credential capable of supporting remote authentication (Figure 1). The examples below show how varied these initiatives are:

• The European Union is implementing the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet framework. Separately, the Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR) sets out new requirements for customer due diligence and identity verification.
• Uptake of electronic ID (eID) is particularly high in the Nordics, with 90–98% of the population using eIDs in 2023–2024.
• India has established one of the world’s largest digital identity infrastructures through Aadhaar and DigiLocker.
• Digital identity ecosystems are increasingly extending across public- and private-sector services, as demonstrated by Singapore’s Singpass.

For consumers, a growing number of digital identity schemes brings greater choice and convenience. People can use identity solutions that are already trusted and widely adopted in their market, rather than relying on a single global approach.

For organisations, however, the picture is more complex. Each new scheme can mean additional integrations, vendor relationships, compliance checks and technical requirements. Supporting every scheme individually is neither practical nor scalable.

More importantly, being able to receive a digital credential does not, by itself, mean an organisation should rely on it.

Many discussions about digital identity focus on technical connectivity: can an organisation receive and process a particular digital credential? Connectivity is important, but it overlooks a more fundamental challenge.

Digital identity schemes can differ in how an individual is initially verified, how credentials are issued, how users authenticate and what level of assurance the resulting credential provides. Organisations therefore need to understand the trust framework behind the credential, not simply whether their technology can accept it.

That means answering questions such as:

• Is the credential genuine, valid and issued by a recognised source?
• How was the individual originally verified?
• Can the organisation establish that the credential is being presented by its legitimate holder?
• Does the credential meet the requirements of the intended use case?

The question, therefore, is no longer simply whether an organisation can accept a digital identity, but whether it can trust that identity for a particular purpose. Trust is not a binary judgement, but one shaped by the level of assurance provided and the requirements of the use case. As the digital identity landscape expands, organisations need a consistent way to make these assessments across different schemes and customer journeys.

As digital identity adoption grows, consumers will increasingly expect to use trusted digital credentials across organisations and borders. At the same time, the future of digital identity is unlikely to be defined by a single wallet, provider or national scheme. Organisations therefore need to navigate multiple identity ecosystems without adding unnecessary complexity, while retaining confidence in the identities they accept.

Interoperability will be central to addressing this challenge. As identity ecosystems expand, organisations will need to recognise and assess credentials from different schemes, issuers and providers, alongside other forms of identity verification. This creates greater flexibility to determine the appropriate approach based on the customer, use case, risk profile and regulatory requirements.

The challenge, then, is not simply one of connectivity, but of establishing trust consistently across different identity ecosystems. Interoperability can provide the foundations for credentials and identity services to work across organisational, technological and geographic boundaries, while allowing different levels of assurance to be applied where appropriate.

As the digital identity landscape continues to evolve, the organisations best positioned for success will not necessarily be those connected to the most schemes. They will be those able to navigate different identity ecosystems and establish the appropriate level of trust for each customer journey.