eIDAS 2.0 & EUDI Wallet: What Digital Credentials Must Be Able to Do Now

What eIDAS 2.0 and the EUDI Wallet Actually Mean

The eIDAS 2.0 Regulation, officially Regulation (EU) 2024/1183, has been in force since May 20, 2024 and is changing how identities and credentials are managed digitally in Europe. At its core is the EU Digital Identity Wallet, or EUDI Wallet for short: an app that allows citizens to store, control and present their identity and personal credentials themselves, across borders.

The deadline is legally binding: By December 24, 2026, each of the 27 EU Member States must provide at least one certified EUDI Wallet. Member States can offer the wallet themselves, commission an external party, or recognize a wallet from the private sector.

Going forward, citizens should be able to store the following credentials in the wallet, among others:

• Official identity documents and driver’s licenses
• Educational degrees, diplomas and professional certificates
• Professional qualifications and continuing education credentials
• Memberships and authorizations of all kinds

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Annex VI of the Regulation shows how central educational and professional credentials are: Educational degrees and professional qualifications are explicitly included on the minimum list of attributes whose authenticity should be electronically verifiable against the relevant authentic sources.

For organizations that issue certificates and badges, there is no specific legal deadline. However, the pressure comes from the market: As soon as citizens have the wallet on their smartphones, credentials that cannot be stored and verified there will quickly fall behind.

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The Timeline Through the End of 2027

The roadmap can be summarized in two phases:

• By December 24, 2026: All 27 Member States must give citizens and businesses access to at least one certified EUDI Wallet.
• By December 24, 2027 at the latest: Private relying parties that require strong user authentication by law or by contract must accept the EUDI Wallet if users wish to use it. Explicitly named sectors include banking and financial services, transport, energy, health, telecommunications and education. Micro and small enterprises are exempt.

The state of implementation varies significantly between Member States. While some countries officially confirm the deadline, others are signaling delays or limited functionality at launch. In Germany, the state EUDI Wallet is scheduled to launch on January 2, 2027, according to the Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernization.

The binding technical requirements are set out in the European Commission’s implementing regulations. The Architecture and Reference Framework (ARF) describes the overall architecture and has been available in version 3.0 since July 2026. As part of the Digital Decade, the EU is also pursuing the goal that around 80 percent of citizens use a digital identity solution by 2030.

The legal framework can be read in detail in Regulation (EU) 2024/1183, as well as in the European Commission’s official Architecture and Reference Framework.

For more information, read: EUDI Wallet Memorandum of Understanding

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What This Changes for Digital Credentials

For issuers of digital certificates and badges, the EUDI Wallet means one thing above all: Credentials must be structured so that they can be transferred into a wallet, stored there and verified independently by third parties. A simple PDF or image is not enough.

Technically, the EUDI Wallet relies on two formats: SD-JWT VC and ISO mdoc. The W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model 2.0, an official W3C standard since May 2025, is provided as an optional format for non-qualified credentials. What these open standards have in common is what matters most for digital credentials:

• A unique cryptographic signature that makes forgery and tampering immediately detectable
• Independent verifiability by third parties such as employers, without contacting the issuer
• Interoperability between different issuers, platforms and countries
• No dependency on a central database or blockchain infrastructure

Organizations that already build their certificates on open standards today will save themselves a costly migration later. For issuing directly into the EUDI Wallet, the OpenID4VCI issuance protocol and the wallet formats are then added.

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For more information, read: W3C VC Standard: The Future of Verifiable Digital Credentials

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How Organizations Can Prepare Now

There is not much time left before the wallet reaches citizens. Anyone issuing certificates, badges or qualification credentials today should break the transition down into concrete steps:

• Rely on open standards such as W3C Verifiable Credentials and Open Badges instead of proprietary PDF or image formats
• Sign certificates cryptographically from the start, instead of retrofitting security later
• Offer a dedicated validation page with a QR code so that authenticity can be verified independently at any time

• Get users accustomed to wallets today, for example via Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, while preparing issuance into the EUDI Wallet in parallel
• Rely on the trust model of the Architecture and Reference Framework: It anchors trust through European Trusted Lists, not through a blockchain as the sole trust anchor
• Review existing certificate issuance processes early for compatibility with European standards

This is exactly where Virtualbadge.io comes in: Certificates and badges are cryptographically signed with ECDSA from the start, are based on the W3C VC 2.0 standard and work without blockchain. In addition, we are already in the EUDI Wallet sandbox and are building the issuance of credentials directly into the EUDI Wallet via OpenID4VCI. Credentials can also already be stored today as a Digital Wallet Card in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, including a QR code for validation.

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Future-Proof Your Certificates Now

The first state EUDI Wallets are set to launch at the turn of the year, and the technical transition requires lead time. Organizations that rely on open standards, cryptographic signatures and wallet-ready formats now will not have to make improvements under time pressure later.

With Virtualbadge.io, certificates and badges can already be issued today in a way that meets these requirements, from the signature to the validation page. In a free demo, we show you what this looks like in practice: Book a demo