By Mikkel Hald, 28/04/26
WAYF is now taking another step into the wallet space. Having already gained its initial experience with digital wallets in the Danish dewa pilot project, the identity federation is now joining a broader Nordic collaboration to explore and develop support for wallets and verifiable credentials within research and higher education.
The collaboration takes place between the Nordic NRENs – the national research and education networks – and aims both to identify concrete use cases and to drive practical technical development. As outlined on the project site, the objectives include improving the NRENs’ understanding of how wallets work, assessing their use in research and education, exploring their interaction with government-issued wallets In short, a digital wallet is an application in which the user can receive, store and later present digital proofs about themselves. Whereas traditional identity federation typically exchanges user information between a user organisation and a service at the moment of login, the wallet model shifts the flow somewhat: the user is issued with credentials by a trusted source – for example, an educational institution – and can then present them directly to a relevant party when needed. In wallet terminology, one typically refers to an issuer, which issues the credential; a holder, which stores it in their wallet; and a verifier, which checks its authenticity and validity. This aligns well with the direction described in the European and Danish wallet initiatives, where the wallet is intended to hold both identity information and other verifiable digital proofs.
For WAYF, the work specifically involves developing an issuer interface for the federation’s proxy infrastructure. The idea is that WAYF can thereby enable its user organisations to issue wallet credentials to their users without each institution having to build the entire issuance infrastructure from scratch. Initially, it will be natural to base this on the information already included in the federation’s login assertions – such as name, institution, affiliation, role and similar attributes – and map these relatively directly into credentials that can be stored in the user’s digital wallet.
In practice, this would position WAYF as a form of “issuance as a service” provider for the sector. For institutions, it offers a way to get started with wallets without having to take on the full complexity themselves, and for users it represents a step towards a more user-centric model in which they have greater control over their verifiable information. In the longer term, the model also opens up the possibility of issuing other types of credentials beyond the relatively “small” user attributes currently exchanged within the federation – for example, study-related proofs, memberships, employment attestations or other institutionally anchored credentials.
The research and education sector is particularly well suited as a testing ground. Over time, wallets could be used for everything from digital student IDs and proof of enrolment status to the exchange of educational credentials, participation in research collaborations, and access to services where it is not the entire user profile but only a specific verifiable attribute that needs to be disclosed – so-called selective disclosure. WAYF’s involvement in the dewa pilot already pointed in this direction: starting with simple digital student IDs and moving towards exam-related and EU-verifiable credentials.
Developments in the sector are taking place in parallel with the emergence of a public Danish wallet infrastructure. The Danish Agency for Digital Government is working on AltID as Denmark’s national digital identity wallet, expected to be launched in 2026. The first credentials will be an identity card and proof of age, but the model is intended gradually to encompass many more types of credentials and ultimately to be usable across the EU. This is part of eIDAS2, which requires each EU/EEA country to provide at least one digital identity wallet to its citizens.
For WAYF, however, the key point is not merely to follow a policy trend, but to ensure that the needs of the research and education sector are reflected in this new wallet landscape. Interoperability is crucial: credentials must be usable across institutions, sectors and ideally also across national borders. This is why it makes sense for the work to take place in a Nordic context, where shared use cases and common technical approaches can help create solutions that fit the sector while also integrating with broader national and European ecosystems.
Whether wallets will ultimately become a supplement to traditional identity federation or a more fundamental new building block for the sector remains to be seen. However, with the Nordic collaboration and the development of issuer support within WAYF, the technology is moving one step closer from experimentation to practical infrastructure.