IDEMIA’s ‘POTENTIAL’ Consortium to Pilot EU ID Wallet

The France-based security giant IDEMIA has announced that it will be part of a consortium that will pilot EU Digital Identity Wallet prototypes.

IDEMIA is joining the so-called “POTENTIAL Consortium”, which will comprise 148 participants from 19 European Union states as well as Ukraine. IDEMIA’s official announcement offered few details about POTENTIAL, but explained that its pilot would be focused on six use cases for the EUIDW: “Electronic Government services”, “Account opening”, “SIM registration”, “Mobile Driving Licence”, “Remote Qualified Electronic Signature”, and “Electronic Prescription”.

“All POTENTIAL participants are glad to be entrusted by the European Commission to build such pioneering Use Cases for cross-border testing of the digital European Identity,” the company said.

The announcement comes after last month’s news that a separate consortium, “Nordic-Baltic eID” or “NOBID”, had been selected by European Union authorities to participate in one of four pilot programs that will be focused on enabling cross-border payments in line with the planned European Digital Identity Wallet.

Shortly before that, Stockholm-based Scytáles and its Luxembourg-based partner Netcompany-Intrasoft had revealed that they were awarded a contract concerning the development of the European Digital Identity Wallet itself.

For NOBID’s part, biometric identity verification specialist iProov – a member of the consortium – noted in its announcement of the pilot that NOBID would proceed to “a contracting and grant negotiation process with the EU Commission.”

Similarly, in IDEMIA’s new disclosure about POTENTIAL, the company explained that its consortium “is now ready to engage into a round of negotiations with DG CONNECT which will be concluded by the signature of the Grant Agreement (GA) and the launch of the project”. DG Connect is an abbreviation referring to the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, a body of the European Commission whose mandate concerns investment into critical digital technologies.

IDEMIA says it expects POTENTIAL’s pilot project to begin in May of this year.

(Originally posted on Mobile ID World)