New Digital Credentials Working Group to work with global FIDO Alliance members and industry partners to align digital identity ecosystem
The FIDO Alliance announced today the launch of a new digital credentials initiative, marking an expansion of its mission to accelerate the adoption of verifiable digital credentials and identity wallets. This initiative is poised to help the world simplify and secure online and in-person interactions by establishing a trusted, and interoperable identity wallet ecosystem.
Work on this new initiative will be carried out by the FIDO Alliance’s new Digital Credentials Working Group (DCWG).
“FIDO Alliance united the industry to solve the password problem, and the world is now embracing the simplicity and security of passkeys - with billions of accounts now leveraging this seachange in user authentication. We’re now aiming to bring that same proven, collaborative model to the adjacent digital credentials landscape — working closely with partners including EMVCo, ISO, The OpenID Foundation, and W3C to align a fragmented ecosystem,” said Andrew Shikiar, CEO of FIDO Alliance. “Together, we aim to deliver trusted, interoperable digital wallets that make everyday interactions simpler, more secure, and privacy-preserving for everyone.”
Digital credentials have the potential to offer enhanced ease, security, and privacy to everyday interactions and transactions. Governments around the world are helping lead the way in issuing digital identity credentials -- including the European Digital Identity Wallet program that will see all 27 member states offer citizens digital identities by the end of 2026, and with 18 departments of motor vehicles in the United States having deployed standards-based mobile drivers licenses to over 5 million American citizens.
Widespread adoption has been hindered by ecosystem fragmentation, however, including a lack of global alignment and end-to-end certification. Building on its success with passkeys, the FIDO Alliance will address these challenges through its proven ability to unite stakeholders, develop specifications and certification programs, collaborate with other standards organizations, and implement global adoption initiatives. By applying these strategies to the digital credentials ecosystem, the FIDO Alliance aims to foster a future where digital credentials are as pervasive, trusted, and user-friendly as passkeys are today - helping secure the entire identity account lifecycle for consumers and businesses around the world.
FIDO Alliance will focus on three foundational workstreams in partnership with ecosystem partners such as EMVCo, ISO, The OpenID Foundation, and W3C to unblock the digital credentials ecosystem:
- Wallet Certification: This program will establish certification criteria for digital wallets, ensuring they are secure, protect user privacy, and are interoperable with credential issuers and relying parties. This will provide crucial assurance that credentials are handled with proper security, privacy, and functionality.
- Specification Development: FIDO will develop specifications to complement existing protocols and frameworks from industry partners such as OpenID Foundation, ISO and other standards organizations. For example, the Alliance will develop specifications for presenting credentials across devices by expanding the existing FIDO cross-device protocol. The Alliance also intends to define credential schemes (for example in payments and/or loyalty) as required to address new use cases as they emerge.
- Usability and Relying Party (RP) Enablement: This workstream will accelerate adoption by providing the industry with necessary tools, branding, and best practice guidelines for successful implementation. Drawing from its experience with passkeys, the FIDO Alliance will ensure a seamless user experience, which is critical for new technology adoption.
Through these efforts, the Alliance aims to reduce friction for issuers and relying parties, increase user trust in data security and privacy, and create a vibrant, interoperable market for issuers, wallet providers, and identity services.
Work has already commenced, with initial deliverables planned for 2026.
Industry partner comments:
Loffie Jordaan, Business Solutions Architect at AAMVA and Convenor of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC17/WG10 said, “WG10’s work includes standards for digital credential exchange protocols. Wallets, being one side of a credential exchange, have to support these protocols. In addition to requiring support for these protocols, issuing authorities often have additional requirements on the wallets into which they provision, covering things like device security, holder privacy, and credential life cycle management. The FIDO work will allow issuing authorities to confirm if a wallet being presented for provisioning has been certified against a profile representing the issuing authority’s protocol and other requirements. In doing so, the FIDO work will be of significant value to issuing authorities.”
Gail Hodges, Executive Director of the OpenID Foundation said, “OpenID Foundation welcomes FIDO Alliance’s new initiative on digital credentials as an important step toward advancing a secure and interoperable identity ecosystem. Our organizations have a long history of close collaboration on standards that make authentication simpler and more resilient, and we see the same opportunity to align our efforts as the market rapidly moves toward verifiable credentials and identity wallets. We look forward to working with FIDO and the broader community to help ensure that digital credentials are built on open, privacy-preserving standards that scale globally.”
Seth Dobbs, President & CEO, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) said, “It will take the cooperation of many to address the challenges and opportunities of Digital Identities on the Web. The W3C Verifiable Credentials and Digital Credentials API specifications are designed to help ensure the privacy and security of web users. W3C is pleased to work with FIDO Alliance and others on the technical foundation for interoperable, secure, privacy-preserving digital credentials that work across different platforms and systems.”
Daniel Goldscheider, Executive Director of the OpenWallet Foundation said, “FIDO Alliance specifications are already foundational to the wallet landscape. We warmly welcome this expansion into digital credentials and wallet certification.”
Patrik Smets, EMVCo Executive Committee Chair, commented: “Through our Digital Identity and Payment Task Force, EMVCo is engaging with industry partners to advance agentic payments, authentication, verifiable digital credentials, passkeys for payment, and digital wallets. Earlier this year, we shared our existing digital payment credential schema activity with FIDO to align and gather feedback from its members. This level of ongoing collaboration is crucial to promoting global interoperability across the ecosystem in how we use identity in payments, and we are committed to working on payments use cases with all stakeholders as this progresses at pace.”
About the FIDO Alliance
The FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance was formed in July 2012 to address the lack of interoperability among strong authentication technologies and remedy the problems users face with creating and remembering multiple usernames and passwords. The FIDO Alliance is changing the nature of authentication with standards for simpler, stronger authentication that define an open, scalable, interoperable set of mechanisms that reduce reliance on passwords. FIDO Authentication is stronger, private, and easier to use when authenticating to online services. For more information, visit www.fidoalliance.org.
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