Various Ecosystem of International Leaders in Technology, Finance, and Universities Become the First OpenWallet Foundation Member; Many More Members are Expected.
The OpenWallet Foundation has been formally established, according to the Linux Foundation Europe (OWF). To enable trust in the digital future, this new collaborative effort will create open source software to support interoperability for a variety of wallet use cases, such as making payments, proving identity, and storing validated credentials like employment, education, financial standing, and entitlements.
The OWF is being sponsored by the inaugural Premier members Accenture, Gen, Futurewei, and Visa. American Express, Deutsche Telekom / T-Systems, esatus AG, Fynbos, Hopae, IAMX, IDnow, IndyKite, Intesi Group, Ping Identity, SmartMedia Technologies (SMT), Spruce, and Swisscom are a few of the foundation’s general sponsors.
Additionally, 20 prominent nonprofits, academic institutions, and governmental organisations have joined the foundation, including Customer Commons, Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), Digital Identification and Authentication Council of Canada (DIACC), Digital Dollar Project, Digital Identity New Zealand (DINZ), Digital Identity and Data Sovereignty Association (DIDAS), DizmeID Foundation (DIZME), Hyperledger Foundation, and Information Technologies, ics, and Telematics Institute / Center for (ToIP).
The OWF won’t release its own wallet, provide credentials, or establish brand-new standards. Instead, it wants to become the foundation upon which other businesses and organisations can build their own digital wallets. The wallets will strive for feature parity with the best wallets currently on the market and compatibility with significant international initiatives like the EU’s Digital Identity Wallet. With such a significant and varied membership, OWF emphasises the significance of having an open foundation to support a variety of digital wallets in order to guarantee consistency, interoperability, and portability while safeguarding user privacy.
The second initiative that the Linux Foundation Europe hosts is the OWF. In order to establish an open source telecom cloud software platform, Project Sylva was added in November 2022. A new paper from the OWF in collaboration with Linux Foundation Research entitled Why the World Needs an Open Source Digital Wallet Right Now is being released concurrently with OWF. Noted in the report:
- Digital wallets are the most popular form of payment for retail point-of-sale and e-commerce worldwide. Digital wallet transactions totaled $15.9 trillion in 2021.
- There are hundreds of digital wallets, but they are plagued by a number of issues, such as vendor lock-in, lack of interoperability, dubious security, and constrained functionality.
- Although there are plans for new wallets, without coordination between them, every nation or organisation that provides credentials risk becoming a walled garden. Other IDs and wallets won’t function, which will interfere with travel, international students, and mobile workforces.
- We need a top-notch wallet engine because there will be many different wallets in use in the future, which calls for the inclusion of interoperability.
“The world needs a place to store digital assets that matter, and the work of this foundation has the potential to redefine the credentials landscape globally, creating in turn much better digital experiences for people everywhere and new market opportunities,” said Gabriele Columbro, general manager of Linux Foundation Europe “The EU has been a leading force in data privacy and consumer protection, and efforts like OWF offer a concrete opportunity for policy makers to “shift left” their engagement, enabling a continuous and transparent feedback cycle between regulations and regulated technology. That’s why we are honored to bring such a relevant group of cross-industry players together in OWF under Linux Foundation Europe. “
