A national eID and a EUDI wallet are not the same thing. A national eID is a country-specific credential that lets you prove who you are within that country’s systems. The EUDI wallet goes further: it is a standardised, cross-border digital container that can hold your national eID alongside other verified credentials, and it is designed to work across all EU member states. This article walks through how each one works, what sets them apart, and what this means for organisations preparing for eIDAS 2.0.
How does a national eID actually work?
A national eID is a government-issued digital identity credential that allows a person to authenticate themselves and access services within a specific country. It is issued and managed at the national level, which means each EU member state has its own system, its own technical standards, and its own set of services that accept it.
In practice, a national eID can take several forms: a physical smart card with a chip, a mobile app, or a username-and-password system backed by a verified identity. The Netherlands has DigiD as an authentication mechanism, Germany has the Online-Ausweisfunktion on its national identity card, and Austria has the ID Austria digital identity infrastructure. These systems work well within their own borders, but they were not originally designed to work seamlessly across countries, and they are distinct from the EUDI wallet solutions that member states are now developing.
Under the original eIDAS regulation, Regulation (EU) 910/2014, member states could notify their national eID schemes so that other countries were obliged to accept them for cross-border public services. That was a step forward, but adoption remained uneven. Many private sector services were not included, and the user experience varied significantly from one country to the next. eIDAS 2.0, Regulation (EU) 2024/1183, amends that regulation and introduces the EUDI wallet framework.
What is the EUDI wallet and what can it store?
The European Digital Identity Wallet, or EUDI wallet, is a standardised digital application that EU citizens and residents can use to store, manage, and share verified identity data across borders and across both public and private services. It is the centrepiece of eIDAS 2.0 and is designed to give people a single, interoperable digital identity that works throughout the European Union.
The wallet can hold a wide range of verified credentials, including:
- A person identification data set (the digital equivalent of your national eID)
- A mobile driving licence
- Educational diplomas and certificates
- Professional qualifications
- Health documents such as the European Health Insurance Card
- Travel documents and digital travel credentials
- Payment authorisation data
- Proof of organisational representation
Four large-scale pilots ran from April 2023 through 2025 and tested the wallet across real-life scenarios. The EWC consortium focused on digital travel credentials, payments, and organisational digital identity. POTENTIAL covered government services, opening a bank account, SIM registration, mobile driving licences, remote qualified signing, and e-prescriptions. NOBID concentrated on payments, and DC4EU addressed education and social security. These pilots involved organisations across member states as well as Norway, Iceland, and Ukraine, and provided feedback that shaped the wallet’s design for interoperability and security. A second wave of pilots started in 2025: WE BUILD focuses on business wallets and payments, and APTITUDE covers travel, ticketing, vehicle registration, and payments.
What are the key differences between a national eID and a EUDI wallet?
The core difference is scope and flexibility. A national eID is a single credential issued by one government for use primarily within one country. The EUDI wallet is a multi-credential container that is standardised across the EU, works for both public and private services, and gives users control over exactly what data they share and with whom.
Here is a more detailed comparison:
- Issuer and governance: A national eID is issued and governed by a single member state. The EUDI wallet framework involves shared responsibility: the European Commission manages the legal framework and adopts implementing acts; member states provide or mandate wallet solutions, certify and notify them, and supervise actors within their jurisdiction; the European Digital Identity Cooperation Group supports cross-border alignment; and national competent authorities, wallet providers, issuers of person identification data and attestations, qualified trust service providers, and relying parties each play defined roles within that structure.
- Cross-border reach: National eIDs work primarily within their home country. The EUDI wallet framework is designed so that a certified wallet from one member state can be used with an appropriate relying party in another member state, though practical interoperability and the availability of specific use cases across borders will develop in phases.
- What it holds: A national eID typically holds a single identity credential. The EUDI wallet can hold multiple verified credentials from different issuers, including qualified electronic attribute attestations (QEAAs), public-body-issued electronic attribute attestations (PuB-EAAs), and non-qualified EAAs.
- Private sector access: National eIDs are mostly used for public services. The EUDI wallet is explicitly designed for private sector use as well, including banking, telecoms, and healthcare.
- User control: National eIDs present a fixed set of attributes. The EUDI wallet supports selective disclosure, meaning users can share only the specific data point a service actually needs, such as proving you are over 18 without revealing your date of birth.
- Technical standard: National eIDs vary in technical implementation. The EUDI wallet is built on a common architecture defined through implementing acts adopted by the European Commission, with the Architecture and Reference Framework (ARF) providing the technical elaboration of those legally binding requirements. The ARF specifies credential formats including mdoc and SD-JWT VC, and protocols including OID4VCI for issuance and OID4VP for presentation.
Can a national eID and the EUDI wallet be used together?
Yes. The EUDI wallet is designed to build on existing national eID infrastructure. The wallet does not replace a national eID. Instead, a person’s national eID is typically used to onboard into the wallet, providing the verified identity foundation from which other credentials are then issued and stored.
In practical terms, a citizen might use their national eID or an existing verified identity to set up their EUDI wallet. Once the wallet is active, it contains a person identification data set that carries the same level of assurance as the national eID, but in a format that is designed to be interoperable across borders and usable with a much wider range of services. It is worth noting that existing national authentication mechanisms such as DigiD are not themselves issuers of wallet attestations; they may form part of the identity verification process that enables wallet onboarding at the national level.
For organisations, this means that supporting the EUDI wallet does not require abandoning existing integrations with national eID schemes. Both can coexist. The wallet extends what is already possible, and for financial services organisations in particular, this opens up new ways to streamline onboarding and compliance across multiple markets without building separate integrations for each country.
Which organisations are required to accept the EUDI wallet?
Under eIDAS 2.0, certain categories of organisations are legally required to accept the EUDI wallet as a means of identification and authentication. This obligation applies to both public sector bodies and a defined set of regulated private sector entities.
For public sector services, the obligation is broad: any public body that already requires electronic identification must accept the EUDI wallet by 24 December 2026. This is the legal deadline for member states to make at least one certified wallet available and for public sector acceptance to apply. It does not mean that every national wallet will have reached the same level of maturity on that date, or that every possible cross-border use case will be fully operational throughout Europe from that point. National rollout, certification, notification, and the development of operational interoperability will progress in phases.
The acceptance obligation for regulated private sector organisations takes effect on 24 December 2027, pursuant to Article 5f of the regulation, within the context in which strong user authentication is required by law or contract. The private sector categories that fall under this obligation include:
- Banks and financial institutions that require strong customer authentication
- Providers of electronic communications services
- Providers of transport services
- Energy providers
- Healthcare organisations that provide patient-facing digital services
- Education and social security providers
- Drinking water, postal, and digital infrastructure providers
Very large online platforms (VLOPs) with more than 45 million users in the EU, as defined under the Digital Services Act, also fall under a separate provision of Article 5f. For VLOPs, the obligation applies where the platform requires user authentication, on voluntary request of the user and for the minimum necessary data. The condition requiring strong user authentication by law or contract does not apply to VLOPs in the same way as it does to the other regulated categories.
Micro and small enterprises are exempt from the private sector acceptance obligation. This exemption covers organisations with fewer than 50 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than 10 million euros.
Before a relying party can request wallet data, it must register with the national authority of its member state of establishment under CIR (EU) 2025/848, adopted on 6 May 2025. Registration is per intended use and specifies which attributes and attestations will be requested. The wallet checks requests against this registered scope. A relying party must accept every relevant certified wallet, regardless of which member state issued it or which provider supplies the wallet solution. Government organisations are among the first to be directly affected by these requirements.
When should an organisation support the EUDI wallet instead of relying on national eIDs?
An organisation should prioritise EUDI wallet support when it operates across multiple EU countries, serves users who need to share more than a basic identity credential, or wants to future-proof its compliance architecture under eIDAS 2.0. Relying solely on national eIDs makes sense when your service is limited to a single country and your identity needs are straightforward.
The decision becomes clearer when you consider a few specific situations. If your organisation onboards customers from multiple member states, integrating with each country’s national eID scheme separately creates significant technical overhead. The EUDI wallet framework offers a path towards a more unified integration, though national registration requirements and sector-specific legislation remain applicable: relying party registration is connected to the national registration framework of the member state of establishment, and credentials do not automatically carry the same legal consequence in every member state for every use case. Similarly, if your service involves verifiable credentials beyond basic identity, such as professional qualifications, health data, or educational certificates, the wallet provides a standardised framework for handling these at scale.
Organisations in healthcare and pharmaceuticals face a particularly relevant use case: the wallet supports prescription claims and health insurance cards, which means cross-border patient identification and document sharing can become more manageable than it is today with fragmented national systems, as the relevant use cases are rolled out across member states.
There is also a strategic timing argument. The legal deadline for member states to make at least one certified EUDI wallet available to citizens, residents, and businesses is 24 December 2026, with public sector acceptance obligations applying from that same date. The acceptance obligation for regulated private sector organisations in the categories defined under Article 5f of eIDAS 2.0 applies from 24 December 2027, within the context where strong user authentication is legally or contractually required. Organisations that begin preparing their integration and compliance frameworks now will be better positioned than those that wait. The more practical approach is to engage with the transition as it develops and build readiness progressively.
How TrustTech supports national eID and EUDI wallet integration
TrustTech’s ID Connector is an integration that lets relying parties accept every certified European wallet, whatever Member State issued it, for identification, login and qualified signing. EUDI Wallet acceptance comes first; the same interface also carries other IDs, such as national eIDs, bank IDs and identity documents, inside and outside the EU.
For organisations preparing for the EUDI wallet, the ID Connector addresses several concrete requirements:
- Accepting every relevant certified wallet regardless of the issuing member state or wallet provider
- Verifying attestations against national trusted lists, which are aggregated in the EU List of Trusted Lists (LOTL)
- Checking revocation status via issuer-provided status information
- Validating wallet unit attestations to confirm that a presenting wallet runs on a certified wallet solution
- Enforcing the registered attribute scope as required under CIR (EU) 2025/848
- Supporting reuse of verified identity data for KYC and compliance workflows
- Connecting to a qualified trust service provider for qualified signing where required
The ID Connector is built on European digital identity standards and is designed for regulated sectors including financial services, government, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals. Get in touch with TrustTech to discuss how your organisation can prepare for the EUDI wallet and the broader shift in European digital identity.