Decentralized identity in Europe: the software behind a credential
Decentralized identity means the holder keeps the proof. A credential is signed by whoever is competent to state it, stored by the person it is about, and shown to whoever needs it, without the issuer being asked each time. For a bank that changes the plumbing of identity work: you stop calling a provider's API to look someone up and start checking a signature the customer brought with them.
In Europe the regulated form of this is the EUDI Wallet, and the market around it is a software market. Banks and public bodies rarely build the protocol stack themselves; they buy a connector or a wallet platform from a vendor. The field has three roles and one standard underneath it, and the European companies below show what the products actually do. None of this is a ranking or a comparison by vendor size.
Issuer, holder, verifier: the three roles
Every credential flow has the same three parties. An issuer asserts claims about a subject and signs them into a credential. A holder keeps the credential and generates a presentation from it. A verifier receives the presentation and checks it. The W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model 2.0, a W3C Recommendation since 15 May 2025, defines the roles in exactly those terms and a verifiable credential as a tamper-evident credential whose authorship can be cryptographically verified.
A bank plays different roles in different processes, which is the thing to settle before buying anything. At onboarding the bank is a verifier: it checks an identity credential the customer presents. For a proof of account ownership, a credit standing or an employee's authority, the bank is the issuer. In an employee or supplier process the bank can be all three at once. A product that only verifies will not cover the issuing case.
What a connector does
A connector puts an organization's existing systems onto the wallet protocols. It terminates the wallet-side exchange, requests the attributes a process needs, checks the signature and the issuer against the trust lists, and hands the result to the core system in a form it already understands. The bank's onboarding or IAM stays where it is.
The reason this became a product category instead of a project is that there will be many wallets. Analysts frame the connector as an integration layer so an organization connects once instead of integrating each member state's wallet separately, as KuppingerCole's report on the category sets out, and it lists what a regulated buyer weighs: working across wallet implementations, eIDAS 2 compliance including strong customer authentication and electronic signatures, lower integration and maintenance effort, deployment as software-as-a-service or on premises, and participation in the pilots and standards bodies.
Self-sovereign identity and why the EUDI Wallet is not called that
Self-sovereign identity is the older, stronger claim: the person alone controls their identifiers and credentials, with no authority able to revoke the identity itself. It grew out of work on decentralized identifiers and credential formats, and much of the software in this field started there.
The EUDI Wallet uses the same mechanics and makes no self-sovereign claim, because it is a regulated scheme. A member state issues the person identification data, certified bodies certify the wallets, trust lists decide which issuers count, and supervision sits behind all of it. The holder genuinely controls what is disclosed per request. The holder does not control whether the credential is recognized, and for a bank that distinction is the useful one: recognition is what makes the credential worth checking. The EUDI Wallet covers the scheme and its deadlines.
European companies in the field
Each company below is described the way its own website describes it, with a link to that site. They are examples of what the products in this field do, in no order of merit.
Lissi GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, calls itself "a leading German software company that builds the critical infrastructure for organizations to interact with the European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI Wallet)". Its Lissi Connector is API software for eIDAS 2 compliance, and it also offers the Lissi Wallet, an EUDI Wallet prototype, an EUDI Wallet Starter and an Employee Wallet Suite. The Lissi page goes into the company.
walt.id presents itself as "The Infrastructure for Global Digital Identity" and offers Issuer, Wallet and Verifier as separate SDKs and APIs, in an open-source Community Stack and a commercial Enterprise Stack, with stated alignment to eIDAS 2.
Procivis AG, Zurich with an office in Vienna, describes itself as "a technology market leader for digital identities since 2017 and a subsidiary of Orell Füssli". Its Procivis One is, in its words, a modular, open-source technology for digital identities and credentials, built for eIDAS 2.0, the Swiss E-ID ecosystem and the ISO mobile driving license, and it also offers an mGov Platform.
Scytáles AB, Täby in Sweden, with offices in Athens, Boston and Sydney, sells "Secure Solutions for Mobile Identities" and calls itself "Official Developers of the EUDI Wallet & Age Verification Solutions". Its products include a Digital ID Wallet, an ISO mValidator, a Derived mID, an Age Verification Connector and a Mobile Validator for Travel Documents, built to ISO 18013-5, ICAO 9303 and eIDAS 2.0.
esatus AG comes from the enterprise side, with 35 years in security-critical identity systems by its own account, and today integrates EUDI Wallet credentials into systems that are already running. Its SOWL platform, in its words, turns decisions from your systems into usable credentials while ensuring that credentials from wallets can be verified and applied within your own processes, and it names KYC for EUDI and PID as a service area.
IDnow GmbH, Munich, describes its direction as "Transforming KYC to TYC", moving beyond Know Your Customer to Trust Your Customer. Its product list runs from document and biometric verification through eID schemes and EUDI Wallets to AML screening and qualified electronic signatures, and it names AMLR, BaFin, eIDAS 2.0 and PSD3 as the rules it tracks.
Verimi GmbH, Berlin, develops solutions for digital identity management by its own description and calls itself a pioneer in Germany in making digital identities suitable for everyday use. Its current offer names Ident & Sign, tailored software and EUDI Services. Its own site states that Verimi will be discontinuing the Verimi ID Wallet at the end of 2026, so that product is not one to plan on.
Build, buy a connector, or use an identity service provider
Three routes, and the choice follows from the role. Building the stack yourself makes sense only where the wallet exchange is itself the product, because you then carry the certification and the protocol churn. Buying a connector is the common route for a bank that wants its existing onboarding and IAM to accept credentials: the vendor follows the framework versions, you integrate once. Using an identity service provider means buying the outcome, a completed identification, and the wallet is one method inside that service next to eID and video identification.
Whichever route, the regulatory work is yours. The acceptance obligation and the deadlines are on the EUDI Wallet, the trust services and signatures on eIDAS 2 and finance, the due diligence chain on KYC in Germany, and where the data and the keys may sit on sovereign cloud for banking.
How do EUDI wallet providers differ from each other?
By what the software does, not by size. Some sell a connector for the verifying and issuing side, so an organization can accept and issue credentials without touching its core systems. Some sell a wallet platform, for a state wallet or a company wallet for employees. Some sell the standards work, mobile driving licenses and travel documents to ISO and ICAO specifications. And some sell a complete identification service in which the wallet is one method among several. Deployment differs too, between software-as-a-service and on premises, and licensing between open source and commercial.
What is a verifiable credential?
A verifiable credential is a signed set of claims about a subject whose authorship can be checked cryptographically, which is what makes tampering detectable. The W3C data model defines the format and the three roles that handle it. A holder can present a credential without the verifier contacting the issuer, and in the EUDI Wallet the credentials stay on the holder's device.
Is decentralized identity the same as blockchain identity?
No. Decentralized identity needs signatures, keys and an agreed data model, and none of that requires a blockchain. Some decentralized identifier methods anchor keys on a ledger, others resolve through the web or a registry. The European framework does not build the wallet on a blockchain: issuers, wallets and verifiers exchange signed credentials directly, and the trust decision comes from published trust lists.
Who issues digital identity credentials in Germany?
For the core identity data, the state: the German EUDI Wallet is an official project of Bund, Länder und Kommunen, and the person identification data comes from public sources. Everything else is issued by whoever is competent for the attribute, a university for a degree, an employer for a role, a bank for an account relationship, usually through connector software. KYC in Germany covers the identification methods a bank uses today.
Digital identity and Finance Loop
Finance Loop is the meeting place for the banks, payment institutions and software firms that have to make wallet credentials work in German and European finance. Finance Loop runs events in Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich and Hamburg, and in Frankfurt the identity software for European banking is being written in the same city as the events, which is why this field belongs to its Risk & Compliance and Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty tracks.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the adoption of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.