Building a national digital identity platform

Executive Summary

A forward-thinking national government sought to lead a digital identity revolution by transitioning from legacy paper-based systems to a modern digital economy. To achieve this, the national identity body 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, the government has built an identity platform that enables local agencies and businesses—including major banks—to leverage wallet-based identity and provide secure, private digital identities to millions of citizens.

The Challenge: From Paper to User-Centric ID

Despite having a robust digital system, many critical national processes—such as applying for bank loans—still relied on paper-based documentation, which presented several challenges:

• Fraud: Physical documents were prone to forgery and difficult to verify.
• Operational Friction: Manual verification was slow, costly, and cumbersome for all parties.
• Data Accuracy: Paper documents are often outdated, whereas digital credentials provide real-time data.
• Regulatory Compliance: Local laws mandated that sensitive data must be owned and controlled by the user, making traditional centralized databases unsuitable.

The Solution: Wallet-Based ID platform

The government chose walt.id to provide the "plumbing" for their national identity ecosystem. Using the Community Stack, they built a platform for government and business use without the risks of vendor lock-in.

Key reasons for choosing walt.id included:

• Open Source: The Apache 2 license allowed the government to own and customize the platform.
• End-to-End Solution: Holistic tools for Issuers, Wallets, and Verifiers allowed for rapid deployment.
• Modular & Customizable: The flexible architecture supported specific local requirements and custom DID methods.
• Sovereignty: The government maintained full control of keys and data within their existing IT infrastructure.

Use Cases

The first phase of the roll-out focused on a high-impact loop between the government, citizens, and the banking sector:

1. Issuance: The government issues digital credentials, such as official tax documents, as machine-readable identity credentials.
2. Storage: Citizens claim and store these credentials in secure digital ID wallets.
3. Verification: When accessing services (e.g., loan applications), users share credentials via a link or QR code. Banks instantly verify the data, enabling faster decisions and a superior user experience.

Impact & Outlook

With the Issuer, Wallet, and Verifier in production, the ecosystem is set for a massive expansion involving major local banks, reaching over 20 million consumers and thousands of businesses. This foundation paves the way for future use cases like online onboarding, age verification, and streamlined digital check-outs.

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.