[Editor’s note 02/12/26: This article has been updated to correct the list of MoU signatories. IDEMIA, Docaposte, and IN Groupe are not among the signatories at this time.]
A group of French public-sector and private-sector organizations has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) intended to coordinate France’s approach to implementing the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet.
The MoU is framed as a coordination framework for France’s wallet work, bringing together France Titres and a mix of technology and trust-service providers involved in the digital identity and trust-services ecosystem. The agreement reflects the breadth of the implementation stack required for a national wallet rollout, spanning areas such as identity proofing, credential issuance, cryptography, secure components, and relying-party integration.
While the signatory roster is broad and expected to evolve over time, the MoU as published lists iDAKTO, Orange Business, Sopra Steria and Thales among the participating organizations, alongside France Titres and other stakeholders.
The EUDI Wallet initiative under eIDAS 2.0 is meant to support a common approach for EU residents to hold and present digital identity attributes and credentials. For relying parties, the value proposition is that wallet-based credential presentation can reduce friction for onboarding and authentication while improving assurance, assuming interoperability, governance, and trust frameworks hold up in practice.
France is one of the EU’s largest markets for identity and trust services, and its implementation choices will be closely watched by both vendors and relying parties. Coordinated rollout efforts can influence technical decisions such as how identity proofing is performed, what credential formats and trust lists are used, and how onboarding is structured for public and private-sector acceptance. It can also affect procurement opportunities, as governments and large enterprises look for wallet-compatible verification, signing and trust-service components.
Interoperability remains a central concern as member states build their own wallet implementations. The push for coordination comes amid interoperability challenges for member state EUDI wallets, which may affect cross-border acceptance in early phases of deployment. At the EU level, timelines and resourcing have also been shaped by EU funding for the EUDI Wallet and eIDAS 2.0, as implementers prepare the ecosystem for large-scale adoption.
France has already tested smartphone-based identity use cases in earlier initiatives, including France’s Digital ID app for age verification, and stakeholders across Europe have been accelerating preparations as EUDI Wallet adoption nears.
The MoU does not, by itself, resolve open questions around governance and technical architecture, but it signals an intent to align major participants ahead of wider deployment and relying-party onboarding.
–
By Ali Nassar-Smith
