The ECSAs include the European Banking Federation (EBF), the European Savings and Retail Banking Group (ESBG) and the European Association of Co-operative Banks (EACB).

The organisations welcome the Commission’s proposal, announced on 3 June, for a regulation establishing a framework for a European Digital Identity, as well as the high ambitions outlined in the initiative, which represent a positive development in the creation of a future-proof EU single digital market.

A European digital identity will make it possible to offer faster onboarding processes and improve customers’ user experience while ensuring the same level of security as face-to-face onboarding. The ECSAs believe that the proposal will ultimately contribute to facilitating the adoption of digital banking services.

The Commission proposal aims to provide an ecosystem of credentials leveraging a new wallet architecture of several ID solutions, which holds the potential to further increase innovation for the benefit of all European businesses and citizens. The proposed decentralised model fosters personal autonomy and increased personal data protection, giving users control over their identity attributes.

The ECSAs believe the proposal will incentivise the Member States to be more expedient in developing e-ID solutions with a wide scope of usage and potentially much higher adoption rates. It also provides grounds for some attributes to be validated against public sources. This is a welcome development, particularly in processes where a high level of assurance of these attributes is necessary, for example, the KYC process. When acting as relying parties, banks should be aware of the chain of trust in data sharing (including actors involved) and should be able to promptly check the validity of credentials.

Call for banking sector’s involvement in the Toolbox

The ECSAs appreciate the cooperation between the European Institutions, Member States and the private sector. Member States should cooperate in a coordinated manner towards a Common Toolbox. The European digital identity should build on existing (and upcoming) national notified e-ID solutions. The ECSAs believe that the banking sector should also be involved in the development of the Toolbox. Banks can be key partners in drafting a roadmap that ensures successful e-ID adoption given the wide scope of use cases and related implementation costs.

It will be key to establish a common technical architecture that enables the private sector to integrate any digital wallet developed within this regulatory framework without additional technical burden, regardless of where it is issued.

The ECSAs look forward to a Toolbox that is a common, openly available standard that enables the development of multiple, interoperable e-ID solutions and which incentivises private sector schemes to participate.

About the ECSAs e-ID Task Force

The ECSAs e-ID Task Force brings together experts from 36 financial institutions and national banking associations with the goal of expressing a common position for the whole sector on Digital Identity. The Task Force stands ready to further engage on the strategic issue of digital identity with the Commission, the EU co-legislators and a wide range of stakeholders both at European and national level.