TL;DR: Digital identity verification in 2026 means two checks: an electronic ID confirms who a person is, and the issuer's own record confirms what that person claims, such as a diploma or a licence. Under Regulation (EU) 2024/1183, every EU Member State must offer a European Digital Identity Wallet by the end of 2026, and regulated private services such as banks must accept it on request by December 2027. TRUE Original handles the second check. It issues blockchain-secured certificates, diplomas and licences that anyone can verify with TRUE Verify, and TRUE Wallet keeps them in a profile where an eID confirms the holder's name.
Digital identity verification is the process of confirming at a distance that a person is who they claim to be, using an electronic identification (eID) means, a check of an identity document, or both. In the EU, the eIDAS regulation sets three assurance levels for electronic identification: low, substantial and high. The higher the level, the more a bank or an agency can rely on the person at the screen being the person in the record.
Digital identity verification is also called identity proofing or eKYC. TRUE Original handles the check that comes after it: whether the diploma, certificate or licence a verified person presents is genuine, which anyone can confirm in TRUE Verify. The need is measurable. According to the US Federal Trade Commission, consumers filed more than 1.1 million identity theft reports through IdentityTheft.gov in 2024, and reported fraud losses passed $12.5 billion, a 25% rise on the year before.
Identity is half the job. A recruiter at a hospital hiring a nurse needs to know who the applicant is. She also needs to know whether the nursing licence is real, current and issued to that applicant. The eID says nothing about the licence. Only the issuer's record does.
That split runs through everything that changes in 2026. Governments are building the first half: an identity at the highest assurance level in every citizen's phone. The second half, the diplomas, certificates and licences people present every working day, stays with the organisations that issue them.
Identity verification confirms once, usually when an account is opened, that a person is who they claim to be. Authentication confirms at every later login that the same person is back. Neither shows whether a diploma or a licence the person presents is genuine, and that third check is the one TRUE Original handles with TRUE Verify.
NIST draws the line in its Digital Identity Guidelines, SP 800-63-4, published in 2025. Identity proofing gives assurance “that an applicant holds the claimed real-life identity”. Authentication gives assurance “that the claimant is the same individual to whom the authenticator was registered”. A fintech needs both, and an employer hiring a nurse needs the third as well.
The European Digital Identity Wallet must be available in every EU Member State by the end of 2026, under Regulation (EU) 2024/1183, the revision of eIDAS often called eIDAS 2.0. The regulation gives each Member State 24 months from the entry into force of the first implementing acts. Those acts, such as Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2979, entered into force on 24 December 2024.
The European Commission's page on the regulation, last updated on 22 June 2026, says the framework “mandates Member States to provide EU Digital Identity (eID) Wallets to citizens by the end of 2026”. Each wallet runs under an eID scheme at assurance level high (Article 5a(11)), and issuing and using it is free for every natural person (Article 5a(13)). The Commission expects the wallet to carry more than a name. It will link a national identity with “proof of other personal attributes like driving licenses, diplomas, and bank accounts”. Blockchain-verified credentials can be stored in digital wallets alongside government ID.
Sweden shows how a deadline meets a delivery plan. Digg, the Swedish Agency for Digital Government, launches the first version of the Swedish state wallet in a test environment in December 2026, according to the timeline Digg updated on 30 September 2026. A broader launch follows in 2027. The last milestone, a certified European wallet, is set for 2029.
The Swedish Police open applications for Sverige-id, a state e-ID at the highest assurance level tied to the national ID card, on 1 December 2026, according to the Police. Digg also tells Swedish organisations that other Member States may offer certified wallets before Sweden does. A Swedish service can meet a wallet from another Member State before it meets a Swedish one.
Public sector bodies must accept the European Digital Identity Wallet wherever they require electronic identification for an online service, and regulated private services must accept it at the user's request by December 2027. The private obligation in Article 5f(2) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1183 covers services that law or contract requires to use strong user authentication. Micro and small enterprises are exempt. Organisations must implement systems to accept wallet-presented credentials. This applies to public services immediately and expands to large private sector organisations by 2027.
The citizen keeps the choice. The regulation's recitals state that “Users should be under no obligation to use a European Digital Identity Wallet to access private services”. A bank that accepts the wallet therefore keeps its other onboarding routes open for every customer who does not bring one.
The most reliable way to verify identity for a high-value transaction is an electronic ID at eIDAS assurance level high, combined with a check of every supporting document against the issuer's own record. A photographed ID card and a selfie are weaker evidence, and the fraud data from 2025 shows why.
Regulation (EU) 2024/1183 builds the European Digital Identity Wallet on assurance level high, and recital 19 of the regulation gives the reason: “Only Member States’ competent authorities can provide a high level of confidence in establishing the identity of a person and therefore provide assurance that the person claiming or asserting a particular identity is in fact the person he or she claims to be.”
Image-based checks are under pressure. AI can now generate convincing fake credentials in minutes. The visual security features that protected documents for decades (watermarks, holograms, embossed seals) can be replicated by AI image generators. More concerning: AI can generate synthetic identities with consistent documentation (fake certificates, diplomas, and professional licenses that all cross-reference correctly because AI generated the entire identity package). According to Entrust's 2026 Identity Fraud Report, published in November 2025, deepfakes accounted for one in five biometric fraud attempts, and deepfaked selfies rose 58% in 2025. National ID cards made up 46% of all fraudulent document submissions worldwide, the same Entrust report found. Entrust also counted digital forgeries at 35% of document fraud in 2025, up from a 29% average over 2022 to 2024, with their sophistication “driven by the online availability of AI tools”. “Identity is now the front line,” said Simon Horswell, Senior Fraud Specialist Manager at Entrust.
A high-assurance eID settles who is on the other side. It does not settle whether the medical licence, the engineering degree or the auditor's certificate behind the deal is genuine. That second check belongs to the issuer's record: a registry, a digital signature that validates, or a blockchain record that matches the document. TRUE Verify checks a document against blockchain anchors, embedded digital signatures, issuer databases and more than 80 external credential platforms, free and without an account.
The updated Electronic Identification, Authentication and Trust Services regulation establishes: qualified electronic signatures (legally equivalent to handwritten signatures across the EU); electronic seals for organisational authentication; electronic timestamps proving existence at a specific time; and qualified trust service providers who can issue qualified certificates and credentials. When the transaction ends in a contract, the same eID can sign it. TRUE Sign sends any document for signature with BankID, Freja or eIDAS, sealed and independently verifiable.
Identity verification for fintech companies in the EU rests on anti-money-laundering law, and from 10 July 2027 the AML Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 accepts two routes: an identity document checked against reliable, independent sources, or an eID at eIDAS assurance level substantial or high. eIDAS 2.0 adds a second date: banks and financial services that must use strong user authentication have to accept the EU Digital Identity Wallet at the user's request by December 2027, unless they are micro or small enterprises.
Banks and fintechs call this step KYC, know your customer. The law calls it customer due diligence. The European Banking Authority published its Guidelines on the use of remote customer onboarding solutions on 22 November 2022, setting common EU standards for “sound, risk-sensitive initial customer due diligence policies and processes in the remote customer onboarding context”.
The first route is the familiar one: passport, selfie, database lookup. The second ties customer checks to eIDAS. Article 22(6) of the AML Regulation names “electronic identification means which meet the requirements of Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 with regard to the assurance levels ‘substantial’ or ‘high’” as an equal alternative to the identity document.
| Method | What it confirms | Under the AML Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 | What it does not show |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity document and selfie with a liveness check | The document looks genuine and the face matches its photo | First route: a document checked against reliable, independent sources | Whether the selfie is a deepfake; deepfakes made up one in five biometric fraud attempts in Entrust's 2026 report |
| eID at eIDAS level substantial or high, including the EU Digital Identity Wallet | The person controls an eID issued after identity proofing at that level | Second route, Article 22(6) | Whether a licence or diploma the person presents is genuine |
| The issuer's record of a document, checked in TRUE Verify | The named organisation issued the document and nothing in it has changed | Not an identity route; it supports checks of licences and training | Who is holding the phone |
Letting the right customer in is one fight. Keeping the wrong person out of the account is another. Entrust's 2026 Identity Fraud Report found that account takeover made up 82% of fraud attempts against the authentication process at payments companies and 55% at digital-first banks.
Sweden shows what everyday eID use in finance looks like. According to BankID's own statistics, BankID was used 7.9 billion times in 2025 by 8.7 million unique users, and banking and finance accounted for 50% of that use. BankID reports that in 2025, 99.9% of Swedes aged 18 to 67 who are registered in Sweden had one.
A fintech checks more than identity. It checks the adviser's licence, the compliance training of its staff, the certificate behind a partner's claim. Those are documents, and a counterparty can verify them in seconds instead of emailing the issuer, as TRUE Original's guide to financial services compliance certificates shows.
A service that verifies identity through the EU Digital Identity Wallet requests data over one of two protocol profiles set by Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1731 of 15 July 2026: one built on OpenID4VC-HAIP, the other on ISO/IEC 18013-5 and ISO/IEC 18013-7. The person identification data in the wallet is issued in the SD-JWT VC format or the ISO/IEC mdoc format.
The July 2026 regulation amended the technical rules the Commission adopted in November 2024, because the wallet's architecture and reference framework, in the Commission's words, “has evolved significantly” since then. A team that read the 2024 annexes has to read them again.
In Sweden, Digg opens a test platform in December 2026 where relying parties and issuers of attestations can test against the first version of the state wallet. The W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model 2.0, a W3C Recommendation since 15 May 2025, is a standard for digital credentials, and TRUE Original's guide to W3C Verifiable Credentials explains how it works. The W3C Verifiable Credentials standard, adopted by the EU and increasingly by private sector organisations, defines three roles: Issuer (creates and signs credentials), Holder (receives, stores, and presents credentials), and Verifier (validates credential authenticity and integrity).
United States: State-level digital driver's licence initiatives; federal digital identity discussions gaining momentum. United Kingdom: Digital identity framework development; focus on digital right-to-work verification. Asia-Pacific: Singapore's national digital identity system; India's integration of professional credentials. International: ISO standards for digital credentials; professional association cross-border recognition initiatives.
On the issuing side, the TRUE Original REST API has five endpoints for issuing blockchain-secured documents automatically from a learning platform or a CRM.
Trusted identity solutions for public sector needs are eIDs that a state has issued or approved at a known assurance level and, from the end of 2026, the European Digital Identity Wallet, which public bodies must accept wherever they require electronic identification online. Recognition of other Member States' notified eIDs has been mandatory since 2018, according to the European Commission.
In Sweden, the public sector accounted for 6% of all BankID use in 2025, according to BankID. Sverige-id adds a state e-ID at the highest level from 1 December 2026. Digg's state wallet arrives in stages between December 2026 and 2029.
Public bodies issue as well as check. Annex VI of Regulation (EU) 2024/1183 lists the attributes that Member States must make verifiable, at the user's request, against public authentic sources, among them educational qualifications, titles and licences, professional qualifications, titles and licences, and public permits and licences. Under Article 45b(2), an attestation issued by or for a public body responsible for an authentic source has “the same legal effect as lawfully issued attestations in paper form”. Digital credentials issued in one EU member state must be verifiable and accepted across all member states, creating standardisation requirements and opportunities for organisations with European operations.
Bolagsverket, the Swedish Companies Registration Office, built a concept called Proof of Business with TRUE Original, in which official documents become records anyone can verify. “With the help of TRUE, setting up our concept Proof of Business took eight weeks,” said Erika Sjödin, Innovation Officer at Bolagsverket. A government mandate followed for a second phase covering licences, trademark certificates and company registrations (the Bolagsverket case). More on public sector documents: blockchain credentials for government and the public sector.
Organisations that issue diplomas, certificates and licences become sources that other systems check, because eIDAS 2.0 treats a qualification as an attribute a person can carry in a wallet and show to a verifier. A document that can only be confirmed by phoning the issuer becomes the slowest step in an otherwise digital check.
Digg's guidance for Swedish organisations, updated on 30 September 2026, speaks to issuers directly. Organisations responsible for diplomas, authorisations or other verified data may need to make that information available for use in digital identity wallets, Digg writes, and should analyse which data they could come to issue and how.
TRUE Original works on that side of the line. TRUE Original secures each document on a public blockchain, using Ethereum, Avalanche, Fantom and Polygon, and anyone can check it through a QR code or TRUE Verify.
Since May 2026, TRUE Value Software AB has held its own eIDAS qualified electronic seal certificate, which TRUE uses to seal university diplomas on the institution's behalf (eIDAS-sealed university diplomas). The seal and the blockchain anchor are two separate layers. The qualified status comes from the seal and the qualified trust service provider behind it; the blockchain anchor adds a public record anyone can check without the issuer (how the two differ).
On 18 February 2026, Freja eID Group and TRUE Original announced an agreement on integration and business development. Issuers and senders of documents can identify themselves to TRUE Original with Freja's international eID, the same eID is being added for recipients, and the two companies run a joint pilot to adapt the document flow to the technical standards of the coming European wallet, according to Freja's press release. Background: TRUE Original and Freja eID.
TRUE Wallet is a free profile where documents issued through TRUE Original land on their own and an eID confirms the name at the top, so a recruiter sees on one screen which claims a third party backs. On the TRUE Wallet profile page, the identity line reads: “Confirmed by eID. Not by us, and not by the person themselves.”
The same page names the gap the wallet closes: “A certificate proves something happened. On its own it cannot prove it happened to you, or that the file in front of somebody is the one the school issued.” The eID answers the first half. The blockchain record answers the second.
The rest of the profile works the same way. Files a person uploads are marked as self-added. A former manager, a teacher or a colleague can confirm a role or a skill, line by line. A percentage shows how much of the profile a third party backs rather than the person claims. Sign-in with Freja eID is already on the TRUE Wallet login page.
Blockchain gives a document a public, dated fingerprint that anyone can check without contacting the issuer, which is the property a diploma, a certificate or a licence needs years after it was issued. eIDAS 2.0 adds electronic ledgers to the trust services, but only a ledger provided by a qualified trust service provider counts as a qualified electronic ledger.
The mechanism is short. A cryptographic fingerprint of the document, its hash, is written to a public blockchain when the document is issued. Change one character later and the fingerprint no longer matches. Blockchain verification provides mathematical proof, not trust-based assurance. Nobody has to call the school, the authority or the training provider, and TRUE Original documents can be verified by anyone, at any time.
The old model depended on databases and phone calls. A verification portal goes offline, a registry charges a fee, an institution merges and its records move. No single point of failure: the blockchain exists across thousands of nodes. Credentials remain verifiable even if the issuing organisation closes or changes systems. Decentralised blockchain verification provides resilience that centralised systems cannot match. Blockchain-based verification provides the permanence that other approaches cannot guarantee.
Modern blockchain credential systems align with emerging standards: W3C Verifiable Credentials (blockchain provides the verification layer), Decentralised Identifiers (blockchain anchors decentralised identity systems), and eIDAS 2.0 (qualified electronic seals and timestamps can be implemented using blockchain infrastructure). For the full mechanics, see blockchain certificate verification.
Market research firms put the identity verification market at between USD 15.78 billion and USD 16.80 billion in 2026, depending on what each firm counts as identity verification. Both estimates expect double-digit annual growth into the 2030s.
Mordor Intelligence, in a report updated on 11 September 2026, estimates USD 15.78 billion in 2026 and USD 26.8 billion by 2031, a compound annual growth rate of 11.18%. Coherent Market Insights, in a report published on 31 March 2026, estimates USD 16.80 billion in 2026 and USD 40.24 billion by 2033, a compound annual growth rate of 13.3%. The gap is mostly scope. Mordor Intelligence itself warns that published market sizes “can look far apart even when the topic label is the same, because each publisher chooses its own scope boundaries, base year, and pricing logic”.
An organisation preparing for digital identity verification in 2026 should first decide which role it plays: a relying party that accepts identities and attestations, an issuer of attestations such as diplomas and licences, or both. The roles bring different work, and the dates differ.
The regulation gives every Member State until the end of 2026. Digg's own timeline puts a certified Swedish wallet in 2029.
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