Part 1: Uncovering the untapped customer opportunity in eIDAS2

eIDAS2 is a billion-euro opportunity just waiting to be tapped—so why isn't everyone seeing it?

In a two-part series, digital identity expert Jamie Smith explains exactly why this is the case, giving us a fresh perspective on its massive potential.

Many experts are excited about the EU’s new digital identity framework and the innovative digital wallet approach for sharing personal data. They say it’s all about a new trusted digital ID, qualified electronic signatures, and login. Important stuff. But those things are only part of the story.

Others closely involved with the regulations talk about e-Government. About the opportunity for advanced ‘tell me once’ services. Where government digital platforms don’t have to ask you again and again for the same data because another government department already has it.

And some talk about the power of eIDAS2 as a move toward digital sovereignty. Towards personal agency and data portability. And the right to digital privacy and anti-surveillance.

These things are also hugely important. But there’s still something missing.

Is it the role of eIDAS2 as a defence against bigtech in Europe? A response to the concentration of data power in the hands of only a few billionaires? A foil against Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon?

Maybe. But again, these things are only part of the story. Because it’s about all this and something much more. Something hidden that most people can’t see.

To understand what I’m talking about, we need to look at eIDAS differently. I don’t mean the privacy story. Or the consent story. Or the identity story.

Let’s start by looking at customer messaging.

Here’s a short story to explain what I mean. I was recently sent an email by my savings bank. ‘We have a message for you’, it said. But of course, there was no message in the message. Why? Because banks don’t use email to send customer messages. The compliance and fraud teams won’t let it happen. Fair point, I thought. I don’t trust email either. The email asked me to head over to the bank’s website so that I could log in and read the important message there. Which I did, except it had been so long that I’d forgotten my login details. Again. They asked for an account number and password that I didn’t have handy. I was locked out. Once again, Password Reset Is The New Login.

So, I requested an account reset. And guess what? They sent the instructions to my bloody email. You know, the one they didn’t trust to send a message to. I opened the email and clicked on the link to reset my account. I was on my mobile device so the browser automatically bounced me to the phone’s native app by default. But of course, my mobile app was out of date and needed an update. So, I headed to the AppStore and triggered the refresh. That took 3 more minutes to download. I finally opened the app, which needed to send me a one-time password (OTP) by SMS. That arrived 40 seconds later, I entered the OTP code and reset the account. Finally, I navigated to my ‘inbox’… and read the Important Message. A pointless update to the privacy policy.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? 9 minutes of my life wasted. I could have spent that valuable time scrolling TikTok. And just for kicks, showing zero empathy for the customer’s emotional experience, the bank chose that exact moment to try and up-sell me another savings product.

I’m labouring this story for a reason.

This is very clearly an awful experience. But how many times do you have to do this each week? Sometimes each day? Because it’s a familiar pattern with ALL your digital relationships. And on average, you have over 100 digital accounts to deal with. Some dead, some old, all previous, some current, few relevant. But all messy, clumsy and fragmented. And by the way, if you help manage a household, then you have on average ANOTHER FORTY digital relationships to look after. Employer. Car. Tax. Insurance. Pets. Health. Money 1. Money 2. Taxi. Deliveries. Netflix. Spotify…

Why is this all such a digital nightmare? It’s simple. Because businesses only really have four ways to ‘engage’ us.

The first two are PUSH:

Message - send a crappy text, with maybe a reminder or a one-time-password;

Email - send a more detailed message, perhaps with an attachment (woohoo).

Both are about interruption and so customers put up barriers. Spam detection. Filters and folders. Rules to auto-ignore.

The remaining two channels are PULL:

Websites - ask the customer to come to your home page, fill out forms, and perhaps even log in (and we know how that goes);

Apps - get the customer to download, or log in to, YET ANOTHER APP. I have so many of these now I’m literally Googling myself on my phone to find the app I need.

That’s it. Four channels.

Now, imagine you are in charge of customer engagement in a regulated business and you’re sending a message to 1.8 million customers about an update.

What would YOU do?

Here’s where I’m going with this. If you look closely, you might see that a digital wallet can become a new customer channel. More trusted than SMS. Less spammy than email. More portable than a mobile app. And more seamless than a website.

Now, consider an actual customer journey. Let’s look at travel. Think about the average, typically complex end-to-end experience for a passenger on an overseas trip. Now think about how many digital tools they might use from the very start (looking at options of where to go and when, where to stay, and why), right through to the return leg and getting home, sorting the admin, and unpacking. It’s very likely involved a mix of YouTube, TripAdvisor, SMS, Email, Messenger, WhatsApp, Websites, Instagram, Airbnb, Expedia, Booking, hotel and taxi portals, airline reservation systems, hotel guest apps, and more. The entire and ‘real’ customer journey is a mess of steps, tools, data flows, forms, and apps. But now think about it from the hotel’s point of view. Receive booking by email. Take payment at reception. Issue door key. Check out.

That’s the total view of the ‘end-to-end’ customer journey. It’s narrow (only a few steps), and it’s shallow (with little information). And you know that it’s limited because when you walk into the hotel they ask ‘Have you stayed with us before, sir?’ To which you say, ‘Yes, I was here two weeks ago, but you’ve already forgotten’.

Now imagine the passenger had a digital wallet. From a data point of view, we can now ‘see’ across the customer experience. The whole trip. All the ins and outs, joining the dots. We can see reusable customer data and identity information that can be shared and reshared by the guest, under their control. And from the business’s perspective, they can, with permission, see a joined-up digital customer experience. Perhaps even open up new opportunities for digital services and revenue streams.

It’s potentially a whole new ecosystem of data and experiences but for the first time organised around the customer.

In the 2nd post, we’ll dig into what this could mean for businesses responding to eIDAS2.

About Jamie Smith