GDC Geneva 2026: Digital Identity’s Next Problem?!

Interoperability was one of the most frequently heard words in Geneva this week. Over three days at the Global Digital Collaboration Conference, governments, standards organizations, open-source communities, technology companies and civil-society representatives examined how digital wallets, credentials and identity systems can work across institutional and national boundaries. The discussions brought another, less visible part of the same problem into focus for me: verification.

A digital credential has little practical value if the organization receiving it cannot quickly establish that it is authentic. A bank opening an account, an employer reviewing a professional qualification, a university accepting an academic credential or a border authority checking a digital document eventually reaches the same point. Someone has presented a piece of verified information. The receiving organization now must determine whether the credential is genuine, has it been altered, did it come from the authority it claims it comes from and whether it remains valid. This sounds like an implementation detail. In practice, it may determine whether the emerging wallet ecosystem works at scale.

I attended the Global Digital Collaboration Conference representing The RegTech and held digital transformation discussions with permanent missions to the United Nations on the sidelines of the meeting. The setting was particularly appropriate. Geneva has long provided neutral ground for institutions that approach the same international problems from very different perspectives, and the conference followed that tradition. Standardization bodies, governments, technology companies, open-source organizations and civil society were discussing infrastructure that none of them can establish independently.

There was considerable attention to wallets, credential formats, interoperability, open standards and governance. This is understandable. Governments around the world are moving from conventional digital identification toward systems in which individuals can hold verified credentials and present specific information when it is required. Europe is approaching a particularly important milestone, with EU member states required to make European Digital Identity Wallets available by the end of 2026.

The infrastructure surrounding those wallets is also becoming more concrete. One of the notable announcements in Geneva was an agreement involving ISO, IEC, DIN and the OpenWallet Foundation that will make important ISO/IEC standards used for mobile driving licenses and digital credentials freely accessible through a sponsorship model. Removing barriers to the technical specifications on which different systems depend can make common implementation easier, particularly for smaller organizations and countries that do not possess the resources of the largest technology markets.

The question of what happens at the other end of the exchange deserves the same attention. Imagine that an Israeli engineer presents a digital professional qualification to an employer in Europe. A European citizen presents a credential to a financial institution in Israel. A company representative from the Gulf needs to demonstrate authority to execute a transaction with an Israeli or European organization. The wallet may function perfectly. The credential may comply with an international format. The practical transaction still depends on the receiving organization being able to establish that what it sees can be trusted.

For this to happen, infrastructure for relying parties is required. The banks, businesses, universities, government agencies, hospitals, border authorities and other organizations that receive digital credentials are in the spotlight here. They need reliable ways to validate cryptographic signatures, recognize legitimate issuers, check credential status and understand the trust framework under which a credential was created. Ideally, this process should happen quickly enough that the person presenting the credential experiences it as an ordinary part of a digital service.

This distinction matters because citizens see wallets but rarely see the verification infrastructure behind them. Since it operates in the background, it is easily overlooked in public debates about digital identity. Yet its quality will largely determine adoption. Organizations will accept digital credentials at scale only if verification is predictable, affordable and easy to manage. Citizens will use wallets when presenting a credential genuinely reduces the administrative steps in their daily lives.

Israel has good reasons to follow this development closely. The country already possesses a national identification infrastructure for accessing government services and a strong institutional base in cybersecurity, financial technology and digital services. The government is continuing to place greater emphasis on cross-government digital infrastructure. In the Gulf, systems such as UAE Pass and Saudi Arabia’s Nafath have also brought digital identity into everyday interactions between citizens, residents, government and the private sector.

These systems are developed primarily in national environments. The next challenge arises when credentials begin to travel. People already do. They study abroad, work for foreign companies, open bank accounts, establish businesses, cross borders and interact with public institutions in several jurisdictions. Their digital credentials will increasingly be expected to accompany them. This is where Israel and the wider Middle East should pay close attention to what Europe is building while developing approaches suited to their own conditions.

The present geopolitical environment makes this discussion more difficult and makes precision more important. The Middle East is experiencing serious security instability and strained relationships between states. Trust cannot be assumed, and proposals that involve common databases, extensive cross-border data sharing or supranational control would encounter legitimate political, security and sovereignty breach objections.

On the other side, Interoperability does not require that kind of institutional arrangement. A credential can remain under the control of the person holding it. An issuing authority can remain fully national. Each country can maintain its own legal requirements, identity infrastructure and security policies. Common technical standards can still allow a receiving system to understand the credential and determine whether the issuer and the credential can be trusted for a particular transaction.

This distinction is important for a region in which institutional cooperation will remain uneven. Technical interoperability can be developed selectively. It can begin with areas where the benefits are practical and the political sensitivity is manageable: educational qualifications, professional licenses, corporate credentials, selected travel documents or commercial documentation. Governments can retain control over what they issue and which foreign credentials they recognize.

Israel should therefore participate actively in the international work now taking place around wallet and credential standards. It should also give greater attention to relying-party infrastructure and to the conditions under which Israeli institutions will be able to verify credentials created elsewhere. The same consideration should apply in the opposite direction: credentials issued by Israeli institutions will become more valuable when foreign organizations can verify them without reverting to scans, emails, manual checks and telephone calls. The objective should not be interoperability for its own sake. It should be the removal of unnecessary uncertainty from digital transactions.

Geneva just sharpened this issue for me. Digital identity does not end when a credential is issued. Its value is tested when someone else has to verify it. For Israel and the wider Middle East, that means building systems in which a bank, government agency, employer or business can confirm that a credential is authentic, quickly and with confidence. If that cannot happen, the wallet is only part of the solution.