Digitizing Thailand’s National Identity Infrastructure

Executive Summary

Thailand is at the forefront of the global digital identity revolution. To transition from legacy paper-based systems to a digital economy, National Digital ID (NDID) partnered with walt.id to build a user-centric digital identity platform.

By leveraging walt.id’s industry leading open source solution (The Community Stack), NDID has built an identity platform that enables the local government and businesses - including major banks - to leverage wallet-based identity and make secure and private digital identity available to millions of citizens.

The Challenge: From Paper to User-Centric ID

Despite having a robust digital ID system, many critical processes — such as bank loan applications — still rely on paper-based supporting documentation.

That being said, paper-based identity documents and traditional processes come with a number of challenges and problems:

1. Fraud: Banks received income and tax data in physical form, which was prone to forgery, difficult to verify, and required manual processing.
2. Operational Friction: Manual verification of paper documents is slow, costly and cumbersome for everyone involved.
3. Data Accuracy & Reliability: Paper documents must be physically obtained from the tax authority and are not available through an online process, making verification cumbersome and often resulting in outdated information. In contrast, digital credentials can provide real-time, accurate data.
4. Regulatory Compliance: Relevant regulations do not explicitly authorize direct sharing of sensitive data (e.g., tax or income information) with third parties. As a result, agencies tend to exercise caution, although such information can be issued directly to the data subject upon request.

As a result, NDID needed to move toward a user-centric digital identity architecture enabling secure and machine-readable identity credentials, compliant with emerging international standards and regulatory frameworks.

The Solution: ID platform based on walt.id

NDID chose walt.id to provide the "plumbing" for their national identity ecosystem. By leveraging walt.id’s Community Stack, NDID can extend its national digital identity platform to support specific data-sharing requirements for the government and businesses - including major banks - without the risks of vendor lock-in or "black box" proprietary software.

NDID decided to partner with walt.id for several reasons:

1. Open Source: The Community Stack is open source and available via the permissive Apache 2 license, allowing NDID to own and customize their platform without downstream risks or limitations.
2. End-to-end solution: The Community Stack provides a holistic, all-in-one solution for Issuers, Wallets and Verifiers, allowing NDID to build end-to-end use cases fast and with ease.
3. Modular & Customizable: The Community Stack is built on a flexible, modular architecture, allowing NDID to customize and extend the solution to align with specific local requirements, such as their own DID method (did:ndid).
4. Support & Services: While starting with open source, NDID utilizes walt.id support to ensure the reliability and stability.
5. Sovereignty: The NDID ecosystem needed to remain in control of keys, data and a solution that works with its existing IT systems and infrastructure.

"We needed a vendor that offered the most advanced and holistic open-source solution. walt.id allowed us to extend our own platform on top of a proven, developer-first infrastructure without being locked into a proprietary 'black box'." - Chakan Pramkaew, CTO

Use Cases

The initial roll-out focused on a high-impact loop between the government, citizens, and the banking sector - seeking to introduce digital ID wallets as well as streamlined access to financial services:

1. Issuance: The Thai Government issues digital credentials such as official tax documents in the form of machine-readable, digital identity credentials.
2. Storage: Citizens can claim and store these identity credentials in their secure digital ID wallets.
3. Verification: When accessing financial services, such as applying for a loan, users can easily share their digital credential with the Bank (Verifier) by clicking on a link or scanning a QR code. The bank can instantly verify the data contained in the digital credential, enabling faster and more accurate decisions at lower cost while providing a superior user experience to bank clients.

Technical Deep Dive

Impact & Outlook

With the Issuer, Wallet, and Verifier now in production, the ecosystem is set for a significant expansion in 2026 involving the government and major local banks, reaching over 20 million consumers and thousands of businesses.

Once in place, the holistic digital identity ecosystem built by NDID creates a solid foundation for use case expansion across various industries - beyond banking and non-bank lenders - such as online age verification and juristic-person use cases.

"New technologies, standards and regulatory frameworks take time to master. By partnering with a provider with deep expertise across these areas and adopting solutions aligned with major global identity standards and regulations, we ensured our infrastructure remain future-ready as the market matures." - Chakan Pramkaew, CTO

Lessons Learned

1. Standard Complexity: Implementing new digital identity technology takes time, yet standards evolve fast so that staying compliant requires deep expertise and a robust infrastructure.
2. Regulation is Key: Successful digital ID adoption is driven by strong regulatory frameworks that define clear standards for both government and business.

About NDID

National Digital ID (NDID) is Thailand’s ID verification platform, established through a collaborative initiative between the public and private sectors.

NDID enables 34 million digital ID user accounts to access 100% online services — incl. banking, insurance, and government filings — without redundant paperwork.

The platform is a regional leader in decentralized identity and eKYC infrastructure. By integrating with major financial institutions as well as government agencies, NDID continues to drive Thailand’s transition toward a user-centric, self-sovereign digital economy.

For more information visit NDID’s website.

About walt.id

walt.id is the leading provider of open source digital ID and ID wallet infrastructure used by +35.000 developers and organizations - including governments and major businesses globally across +15 industries.

The company enables public sector and business clients to introduce wallet-based identity solutions compliant with standards and regulations.

walt.id’s products for Issuers, ID Wallet Providers and Verifiers are available in two product editions: The Community Stack, which is the industry’s leading open source solution and the Enterprise Stack, which is walt.id’s scalable, enterprise-grade solution for large organizations, complex use cases and providers of new IDaaS platforms.

For more information visit walt.id or get in touch.