Romania’s government signed a five-year digital partnership agreement with Mastercard Europe SA to develop a national digital identity wallet aligned with the EU Digital Identity Wallet framework. The Romanian state retains full ownership and administration of the digital identity ecosystem, with Mastercard serving exclusively as a technical service provider at no expense to the public budget.
The partnership’s technical scope covers four pillars: implementing the EUDI Wallet in accordance with EU legislative requirements; developing national ecosystem infrastructure supporting Person Identification Data and Electronic Attestations of Attributes under the eIDAS 2.0 Regulation; integrating identity flows and related services into the national ecosystem; and supporting ongoing development. Each cooperation area has designated ministerial representatives responsible for implementation oversight.
The target delivery date for Romania’s national digital identity wallet is December 2026, the deadline established by EU Regulation 2024/1183 by which all EU member states must offer an EUDI Wallet to citizens. Romania’s wallet will enable citizens to store and present a range of credentials, including university degrees, health cards, driving licenses, professional certifications, and transport tickets, for use with public sector services and private sector relying parties such as banks.
The Mastercard agreement adds a payments infrastructure layer to a Romanian EUDI Wallet ecosystem that already includes Romania’s certSIGN and Lissi EUDI Wallet partnership, which brought eIDAS-compliant API infrastructure for banking and KYC use cases. Romania has been an active participant in the EUDI Wallet piloting ecosystem, hosting the CSC Interoperability Event EUDI Wallet 2026 in March 2026, an exercise involving 13 organizations including wallet providers, certification authorities, and technology developers from across the EU. Banca Transilvania and BPC are identified as pilot partners in the banking and payments sector.
Mastercard’s Romanian engagement reflects its push to replace passwords with biometric authentication across payment and identity ecosystems. Romania’s December 2026 target aligns with the EU’s large-scale EUDI Wallet pilot program, which set interoperability benchmarks for national wallets across payment and identity use cases.
Sources: Identity Week, European Commission, Identity Week
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By Ji-seo Kim
