Why Your Phone Still Can’t Prove Who You Are

The systems we use to prove who we are still lag behind the rest of our digital lives. Across Israel and the Middle East, people routinely move between government portals, banks, universities, hospitals and employers, each time reconstituting the same basic facts about themselves through fresh scans, fresh forms and fresh waits. The process is already digital, and is rarely catastrophic, yet it is persistently inefficient, consuming time that accumulates into real friction for citizens and institutions alike. As someone who has pursued digital public infrastructure for years, I find this mismatch increasingly hard to ignore.

Regionally close by, Europe is completing a project that approaches the problem from a different angle. The European Digital Identity Wallet is designed as a personal application that stores verified credentials on the user’s own device. National identity data, driving licenses, educational certificates, professional qualifications and similar documents can reside there under the individual’s control. When a service requires confirmation of a particular attribute, the holder decides what to release and in what detail. Age verification need not expose a full date of birth; proof of a qualification need not include an entire academic record. The information remains encrypted locally, without a central repository logging every exchange. Member states are required to make at least one such wallet available by the end of 2026, free of charge and optional for citizens.

What distinguishes this model from many earlier digital identity efforts is the deliberate emphasis on selective disclosure and user agency. Most systems I have come in touch with over the years begin with institutional convenience and later attempt to retrofit privacy; the European design started with the opposite priority. The wallet is intended to function both online and offline, to support electronic signatures carrying legal weight, and to operate according to common technical standards that allow credentials issued in one jurisdiction to be understood in another. These choices are technical rather than rhetorical, still they alter the practical relationship between the person presenting an identity and the organization receiving it.

Israel and the wider region already operate sophisticated digital platforms. UAE Pass has become an everyday tool for large numbers of Emirati residents. Saudi Arabia’s Nafath handles high volumes of verifications. Israel continues to generate advanced work in cybersecurity and financial technology. National strategies throughout the Gulf and beyond speak of reducing bureaucracy and delivering seamless services. The capacity and the stated ambition exist. At the same time, the systems remain largely national in scope, often requiring more personal data than a given transaction strictly needs, and movement between countries or even between institutions within the same country continues to generate repeated requests for the same underlying documents.

Considering the principles embodied in the European wallet does not require the wholesale adoption of European regulation. It would mean examining whether an architecture built around verifiable credentials held by the user, rather than repeated disclosure to every service, could reduce the cumulative administrative burden that currently exists. Citizens might gain clearer control over what information leaves their devices. Businesses could lower the cost and residual risk of repeated identity checks. Public administrations might redirect effort from document collection toward service delivery. Fraud becomes more difficult when each presentation of identity is cryptographically bound and initiated by the holder. Cross-border practicalities, from professional mobility to educational recognition, could become less cumbersome if credentials travelled with greater reliability.

I understand that political realities in the region remain complex and that levels of trust between states vary. Obviously, concerns about data sovereignty are legitimate and persistent as in other regions of the world. Finally, privacy expectations differ across societies, which brings us to the conclusion that some governments will continue to favor tighter central oversight. These factors cannot be dismissed. They do, however, leave room for careful experimentation. A wallet-style approach could begin in limited domains, university credentials, professional licenses, residency documentation, allowing institutions and citizens to evaluate the practical difference before any broader commitment. Experience, rather than abstract advocacy, would determine whether the model scales.

There is also a longer-term consideration that extends beyond daily convenience. The jurisdictions that establish workable standards for trusted digital identity will influence how trade, mobility and service relationships develop over the coming decade. Europe is constructing one such framework. Other regions will construct theirs. The Middle East possesses the technical talent, the financial resources in several states, and the policy language of digital transformation needed to shape a system suited to its own linguistic, institutional and security conditions while remaining capable of interoperating with systems its citizens and companies already encounter. Israel’s innovation density and the Gulf states’ capacity for coordinated national programs could each play distinct roles in that process. A shared technical vocabulary would not dissolve borders; it would simply reduce the cost of crossing them.