Fourthline Wins Qualified Trust Service Provider Status in the EU

Fourthline has been granted qualified trust service provider status in the European Union, letting it issue the certificates behind qualified electronic signatures itself rather than routing them through another provider.

Qualified status under the eIDAS regulation went to Fourthline Trust Services AB, a subsidiary supervised by Sweden’s Post and Telecom Authority, and the entity now appears on the EU Trusted List. The practical effect is that identity verification and signature issuance sit under one roof: a customer can be verified and then sign inside a single continuous session, with no intermediary in the chain.

One consequence lands directly on the sign-up flow. Qualified status allows signing without an SMS one-time passcode, a step the company says causes drop-off, while staying compliant with eIDAS and the relevant ETSI and CEN standards.

As a qualified provider the subsidiary is authorised to create and validate qualified certificates for electronic signatures, which is what removes the intermediary: partners reach qualified signatures and certificate issuance through Fourthline directly, and the company said they can begin migrating now. Fourthline described the status as giving it control over the whole digital trust chain, from verifying who a customer is through to issuing the signature they use.

“By building our QTSP infrastructure similar to our sovereign AI-powered platform that drives our industry-leading identity verification, we are able to offer unprecedented security, performance, and innovation,” said Ralph Post, a board member of Fourthline Trust Services AB. He described the status as “the natural evolution of what Fourthline has always been building: a platform where identity verification and qualified trust services aren’t two separate events but one seamless, regulated experience.”

The company set the certification against the Anti-Money Laundering Regulation taking effect in 2027, under which eIDAS-compliant electronic identification means and qualified trust services are expressly recognised as methods that can support customer identity verification. Fourthline itself is a licensed financial institution regulated by De Nederlandsche Bank, and agreed in July to merge with Veridas into a transatlantic identity verification platform.

The same regulatory deadline has been drawing verification vendors into the qualified trust layer through Sweden’s supervisor. IDnow’s own Swedish trust services arm was certified last week to issue qualified electronic attestations of attributes, a different qualified service covering claims such as an address or a tax identification number, with its conformity report still before the same authority.

Sources: Business Wire

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team