The forecast of how many people will use digital identity wallets by 2029 stands at a colossal 1.5 billion, with approximately 30% of all digital identities stored in a wallet. The findings were part of a report by Goode Intelligence, titled “The Global Opportunity for Verified Citizen and Consumer ID” that examined the market for both government and private issued digital identities.
Compacted in digital wallets, the most popular identity credentials revealed in the report are digital driving licenses, travel IDs and national IDs, issued by governments around the world.
IDs are now clearly entrenched for security purposes and user experience in commercial sectors like telecommunications and employment, as well as fundamental services such as banking and travel.
Digital identity trends are being formulated by governments too in setting out digital identity systems that will leverage biometrics, digital identity wallets, Verifiable Credentials (VCs) and public-key cryptography as major technology pillars.
Alan Goode, author of the report, commented on the “collective will” to fix the problems that we currently have for digital identity including “lack of availability, little interoperability between digital identity schemes, slowness for governments to establish digital identity schemes and competing business interests”.
The end of the current decade promises the most digital transformation to date, although not the total demise of paper identities.
“Since the first edition of this report was published in 2019, there have been fundamental shifts in the need for people to identify themselves digitally. COVID19 has accelerated trends for the need for citizens, employees, travellers, patients, and consumers to have a reusable, verified, digital representation of who we are and what we can do.”
