The Dominican Republic is running a pilot program introducing verifiable credentials for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises while the broader Latin America and Caribbean region advances a parallel initiative enabling cross-border use of national electronic IDs. The MSME pilot is led by the Dominican Ministry of Public Administration in partnership with the World Bank, the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and MSMEs (MICM), and the Association of Full-Service Banks (ABA).
The pilot introduces a digital wallet enabling businesses to store and selectively disclose credentials to government agencies and banks. Credentials available in the wallet include tax IDs, commercial registry documents, and company bylaws. The target sector represents 38 percent of Dominican GDP and more than half of total employment but remains overwhelmingly informal, limiting businesses’ ability to access formal credit, government procurement, and financial services that require documentary proof of registration and compliance.
The pilot aims to cut bureaucratic processes currently taking weeks by enabling near-instant, authenticated credential sharing between businesses and institutions. A staged rollout began in mid-2025, with a final product demonstration planned at the World Bank’s Global Digital Summit in April 2026. Governance for the pilot spans an advisory board with international standards bodies, a governance committee of Dominican public institutions and the World Bank, and a technical committee handling architecture and testing.
The Dominican pilot aligns with the World Bank’s verifiable credential framework for portable digital payment identities. It also complements the Dominican Republic’s electronic passport rollout as part of the country’s broader digital identity modernization.
The parallel LAC initiative, funded by Co-Develop, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank and coordinated by regional digital government network RedGeALC, targets a federated authentication broker built on open standards and a shared trust framework. The effort grows from Latin America’s cross-border digital ID broker initiative first launched between Uruguay and Brazil in 2025.
First-wave participants include Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Dominican Republic, and Uruguay. A second wave will add Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Guatemala. Use cases across the regional program span migration, trade, education, health, and tax administration.
Sources: World Bank
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
