OpenID Foundation Launches eKYC Work Item for mDL Adoption

The OpenID Foundation has launched a new eKYC work item within its established eKYC and Identity Assurance Working Group, responding directly to a draft practice guide from the National Institute of Standards and Technology aimed at helping financial institutions verify customers through mobile driver’s licenses.

The NIST document, NIST SP 1800-42, titled “Digital Identities: Mobile Driver’s License (mDL): Accelerating Development and Adoption of Digital Identity for Financial Institutions,” was published as an initial public draft on March 18, 2026, by the NIST National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. The public comment period closes May 8, 2026, and NIST will host a public webinar on April 23, 2026, to discuss the draft. The document was developed with 29 industry and government collaborators, including state DMVs, financial institutions, wallet providers, and standards bodies including ISO/IEC SC17 WG10.

The OpenID Foundation’s work item addresses a gap the NIST guide does not fully resolve: defining how identity proofing assurance can be conveyed from credential issuers to relying parties in a machine-readable, interoperable way. The work item extends the OpenID Identity Assurance Schema Definition and the Connect for IDA Claims Registration specifications, establishing defensible “reasonable belief” standards for customer identity verification under both domestic and cross-border regulatory frameworks, including the Bank Secrecy Act’s Customer Identification Program requirements.

Dima Postnikov, Vice Chair of the OpenID Foundation, framed the scope of the initiative broadly: “Globally, many financial institutions, telecommunications providers, and companies in other regulated industries are preparing to begin accepting MDLs. For them to start relying on this document, they need additional information to ensure they are compliant with their obligations. This report from NIST and a new work item in the eKYC working group are important pieces of work, not just for MDL adoption but for any credential and for digital identity reliance in general.”

The announcement follows NIST’s draft practice guide for financial institutions, published in March 2026, which laid out security and compliance frameworks for mDL adoption but left gaps in machine-readable identity assurance conveyance. The work item also builds on the ISO/IEC standard enabling remote mDL verification, published in late 2024, which specified the OpenID for Verifiable Presentations protocol as one of two core mechanisms for online credential presentation. The NCCoE initiative has been building its industry coalition since 2024, when NIST NCCoE mDL project partners including IDEMIA, SpruceID, and MATTR joined a collaborative research and development agreement.

The work item slots into the broader OpenID Foundation conformance testing program announced in late 2025, which targets 38 jurisdictions adopting digital identity wallets. Alongside the mDL-focused guidance, NIST’s updated digital identity guidelines, SP 800-63 Rev. 4, introduced stricter biometric requirements and formal digital wallet support that relying parties must now account for.

Sources: OpenID Foundation, NIST CSRC, NIST CSRC News

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By Ji-seo Kim