EUDI Wallet deadline: where Europe stands

Regulation (EU) 2024/1183 amended the eIDAS rules and obliges each member state to provide at least one wallet within 24 months after the implementing acts entered into force. The first implementing regulations took effect in December 2024, which puts the deadline for national wallets at the end of 2026. The eIDAS 2 regulation also covers trust services such as qualified signatures and seals.

Companies that rely on the wallet get one more year to prepare. Banks, payment institutions and other providers that must use strong customer authentication have to accept it by the end of 2027, but only when a customer chooses the wallet. Microenterprises and small enterprises are exempt from that acceptance duty under the regulation.

Denmark moved early: its Agency for Digital Government released the AltID app on 3 June 2026. It is open to residents over 13 who hold MitID, and it carries a photo ID and a proof of age that does not reveal the exact birth date.

Italy keeps its IT-Wallet inside the IO public services app, where citizens already store a digital driving license and health insurance card. Poland plans to upgrade its mObywatel app, and France tests the France Identité app in a public sandbox. In October 2026 none of these apps had been certified as an EUDI Wallet under the EU scheme.

Germany will arrive a few days after the EU deadline has passed. The Bundestag passed the Digitale Identitätengesetz (in German) on 15 October 2026, with the votes of the CDU/CSU and SPD coalition. The state app d-you is set to start on 2 January 2027, and the Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation SPRIND develops it for the digital ministry.

Use of d-you is voluntary, and the online ID function is open from the age of 13. A pseudonym function is still missing, as the office of the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection pointed out in the hearing. The Bundestag therefore asked the government in a resolution to deliver it as soon as possible after launch.

For a bank, the wallet first replaces the identification step of account opening. A customer presents identity data that a member state stands behind, so the video call or the scan of an ID card can fall away. Everything after identification, from beneficial ownership to sanctions screening and ongoing monitoring, remains the job of the bank. The EUDI Wallet for banks covers registration as a relying party, trust lists and levels of assurance.

Payments are the question that the wallet debate has left open so far. In a statement of 12 October 2026, the German banking associations (in German) wrote that the relationship between the wallet law and payment services law is still unclear. They asked for a clear line between identification, authentication and the authorization of a payment, and want liability and fraud prevention settled before the wallet is used widely in payment processes.