The European Digital Identity (EUDI) wallet promises to transform how citizens verify their identity across borders, services, and industries.
But there’s a critical misconception that simply launching the wallet will be enough to drive adoption.
In our deep-dive discussion with Joran Frik, Senior Manager of Digital Identity at Deloitte, he emphasized that success won’t come from the wallet alone, it requires a self-sustaining ecosystem where issuers, verifiers, and citizens all have a reason to participate.
This is what he called the "flywheel effect", a cycle where the more credentials are issued, the more verifiers accept them, which in turn creates demand for even more issuers to provide credentials.
When this flywheel starts turning, adoption accelerates.
But getting it moving is the hard part.
Here’s why the flywheel effect is essential and how it can be kickstarted.
Creating the Flywheel for EUDI Success
This flywheel effect is what will ultimately drive adoption and make the ecosystem viable.
But for it to work, each key player must see clear incentives to participate:
1️⃣ Issuers need a reason to issue credentials.
If organizations like banks, government agencies, or employers don’t see value in issuing verifiable credentials, they simply won’t do it. There must be a business model that either compensates issuers directly or reduces their costs in other ways.
2️⃣ Verifiers need a reason to accept and rely on these credentials.
Businesses will only integrate EUDI credentials into their workflows if it saves them time, reduces fraud, or lowers costs. If verifying an EUDI credential is just as expensive or complex as traditional onboarding, adoption will stall.
3️⃣ Citizens need a reason to use their EUDI wallet regularly.
If a digital identity wallet only provides occasional value (e.g., logging into government portals once a year), engagement will be low. But if it can be used across banking, travel, healthcare, and other daily interactions, it becomes a core part of digital life.
To get the flywheel moving…
…the initial focus must be on incentivizing issuers, because without a critical mass of credentials available, there’s nothing for verifiers to accept, and nothing for citizens to use.
This is why the "verifier pays issuer" model is so critical: it ensures that issuers receive financial incentive to make credentials available, kickstarting the entire ecosystem.
Once this momentum builds, verifiers benefit from seamless onboarding and authentication, citizens enjoy frictionless digital interactions, and issuers see recurring revenue or efficiency gains, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of adoption.
Without this flywheel effect, EUDI wallets risk becoming underutilized technology without real-world impact.
The key to success is aligning incentives so that issuers, verifiers, and citizens all have a reason to participate and benefit.
