David Magård, Senior Advisor at the Swedish Companies Registration Office, discusses the convergence of digital identity wallets and payments, and how this evolution is set to transform into business wallets for enhanced functionality and security.
Private-public partnerships are key, giving the private sector the necessary stability and sustainable business model so that they can focus on developing. With that said, I also think it is important to have a government alternative, which Sweden is now developing.
It is easy to speak about golden cases but in reality, the real value will come when we have created a solid base. What I mean with this is that we need trust to interact digitally and letting both natural persons and businesses into different e-services. The wallets with their high level of security will provide this. Then we can standardise and verify data which means that data will be able to flow faster, more freely, and be trusted. Furthermore, standardisation enables lots of work to be automated. It is also about a higher degree of security and efficiency. This should substantially reduce cost as we have seen in for example KYC-processes that we have tested out.
Since the EU Commission will launch a new regulation on the business wallet – and we work closely with them on it – I think some things will change if you come from an eIDAS II- perspective. I hope that we can make it easier for businesses to use the wallets, especially to ensure that they can be server based in a good way. The eIDAS II is very much built with natural persons in mind so it does not always fit businesses or other organisations. Taking the best of eIDAS II and improving it for businesses I think will only create new opportunities.
I think the main hurdle is to ensure the identity proofing. It would be great if we can all have one persistent identifier but now that is not fully the case, it makes it much trickier. Then to get every organisation ready and have the attestation is probably going to take some time as the implementing acts, standards, and so on are not really done.
My talk, together with Marie Austenaa from VISA, will be about EWC learnings and visions about the business wallet and payment functionalities to them. I have been to EIC a couple of times and what I look forward to most is to speak to all the knowledgeable people that will be there. It is really a case of ‘everyone is there’.
About David Magård
David Magård is working as a senior advisor for the Swedish Companies Registration Office, Sweden. David holds an LL.M. and has worked for several years at the Swedish Government Offices with a portfolio focused on digitalisation especially new technologies and digital identity. Among other things, David has negotiated the EU AI Act and the eIDAS II regulation. David is vice chair of Europe in the Open Wallet Forum, part of the Swedish implementation work of the wallets and leads the large-scale consortium EWC as coordinator.
About the Swedish Companies Registration Office
The Swedish Companies Registration Office (Bolagsverket) creates the conditions needed for establishing trust within the business sector.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now