EU’s Digital ID Wallet sparks privacy backlash amid push for 2027 rollout

EU’s Digital ID Wallet sparks privacy backlash amid push for 2027 rollout

Laura Harris

As the European Union (EU) moves forward with its Digital Identity Wallet, growing concerns over privacy, surveillance risks and centralized control threaten to overshadow its rollout.

At the Money 2020 conference in Amsterdam, Visa Europe's Head of Digital Identity Marie Austenaa championed the initiative as a "game-changer" for financial services, predicting it would streamline banking, payments and cross-border verification. 

The Wallet, set for partial deployment by 2026 and full mandatory adoption by 2027, will centralize government-issued credentials, including national IDs, driver's licenses and bank accounts, into a single digital platform. (Related: Senate committee passes bill creating national digital ID system, but they will never require it for voting.)

"One of the exciting things is that there are certain mandatory requirements around the Wallet, it must be used to authenticate a payment transaction, it's written there, that's at least the view we have taken," she said. "That sets certain obligations of the banks, if this really is happening, which I think it is, by 2027 we need to see some changes in the way payment is being authenticated."

If implemented as planned, the Wallet will streamline digital identity verification, replacing a patchwork of bank-specific systems and apps. However, critics warn that the convenience comes at a steep cost: the erosion of privacy and the risk of state or corporate surveillance.

"The risk of misuse, especially if access to the Wallet becomes tied to essential services, could create a structure where individuals are effectively required to participate in the system to function in daily life. The potential for function creep, where a system introduced for one purpose expands into others without adequate transparency or consent, is also a significant concern," Ken Macon wrote in his article for Reclaim the Net. "Without meaningful safeguards, it becomes difficult for users to control how their identity is shared or reused."

Moreover, privacy advocates argue that getting it "right" requires more than technical integration. It requires public debate, legal safeguards and a commitment to building a system that serves individuals, not just institutions.

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