In case you're not tired of me yet. And for everyone who asked, I am very happy in Berlin. I'm very happy being closer to public sector. So thanks for everyone who's been asking. Very happy to be talking about how do we get wallets mainstream? 'cause this is one of the things that keeps me up at night. So we've heard of EIC, many, many times EI that has entered into force architecture reference framework has been published. So I hear many people assume that digital wallets will happen, right? Or not. So I think there are two future paths, right?
One pass is where users use wallets every day, multiple times a day. Very happy. They refer to the user to their friends, you know, spreading like wildfire. Another future scenario is, yeah, users use wallets once a year just because they have to the rest of the years they complain to each other why they have to, right? And I hope they can agree that we want to go here, right? I hope we are all in this not because we want one technology to be used more over the other. I hope that's not the goal. I hope the goal is really to make the users happy. And by the way, these are AI generated images.
So yeah, to me the question boils down to how do we get end users to willingly use the wallet every day. So I'm trying to break it down and from some of my public sector, standby. It's a great Japanese word for like, you know, experts, gurus. I am been learning the theory of digital public infrastructure where public stands for public interest where theory goes like if you have a regulation and you have a one technical stack, the public sector innovation should happen on top of it blooming, right? So in Europe, iida, is there a RF?
Is there we should see explosion of innovation in private sector? No.
Well, to be fair, I do think there's a lot of work happening, but shouldn't it be, I think can be more faster, bigger. But to do that to you know, get to that you happy user picture, how do we accelerate this innovation as part of GPI? 'cause there are obviously limits to what public sector can do.
And again, I'm not telling you anything new. This is the overview of the ecosystem and if to make users happy, we need, you know, both sectors playing together. What role should public sector, private sector and the platform providers each play to make this ecosystem successful? And I'll explain the platform providers later 'cause that's one of the key messages today.
But, so here, let's go through one by one and on top right you have public and the color coding. So for blue public sector, red private sector and those is kind of purple because you know, red plus purple.
So red plus blue makes purple for trust frameworks. I do believe depending on the use case, the trust anchor can be the public sector. If it's in digital national id or if it's you know, education kind of use case, it can be completely within the private sector.
And here, high barriers of entry, highly regulated. A very important component, very important, but probably not a place for market competition. Now the wallets, and I know I've heard all of people say that we want private sector to provide a wallets, but I so a lot of red here, but I still temp was tempted to put this as blue because there are a lot of requirements on the wallet in terms of security, privacy, ux. So we really need to get it raised. So we really need the public sector to really set those, you know, guardly rails so to say.
And within those, you know, private sector can start providing wallets. And here I think is the only place where relationship is platform providers kicks in, right? So let's talk about dependency on the big tech infrastructure and on the top right again the color code on green as an infrastructure and the gray is product. So if you're a verifier and you're trying to talk to the wallet app, if you're running in the browser as a verifier, you need to talk to the browser engine, right? And then to get to the wallet, you have to go through mobile operating system, right?
And share, there are different deployment models, right? The wallet, the RIF verify can be a native app, the wallet can be a browser app, but that dependency doesn't change fundamentally. And the green part, both the browser and the mobile operating system, whether we like it or not, there are two big companies providing them.
Sure there are more than two, but in terms of market share, mainly true.
So for me, moving from America to U to Europe, it was actually pretty fascinating. 'cause in America the assumption is yeah of of course, of course big tech, you know, we are gonna, we are gonna use them, they're gonna drive it, right? Versus in Europe, I do respect really and appreciate this more cautious approach like you know, ai, the spirit of e this is to make sure it's more decentralized, more, you know, so what is this relationship, right?
But also I don't think this blank, you know, we, we don't have to work with 'em, you know, let's segregate them as much as possible is not the right way either. So I did believe there needs to be this clear distinction between these two companies acting as a infrastructure provider also including the hardware interfaces and security modules and those companies providing the native app wallet as a product.
And so this is basically the key message we need to ensure equal prick playground for all wallet apps.
But just to give one example, last week the news broke in that one of the Asian countries became the first country in the world other than the United States to issue their digital national ID into one of the wallets provided by those big tech you can Google. And I don't think the fact itself that that country decided to issue is wrong issue. This blue ticket, right? Golden ticket is, is wrong. But I think the order is wrong, right?
Because once you issue that credential into the wallet app from that provider we live in, we live in capitalism right now, you have an incentive to optimize this infrastructure for the benefit of your own product that helps you drive profit. So, but after we have this leveled playground where any third party application has equal access to these infrastructure after that issuing into wallet that is provided by big tech or whoever, that's totally fine, right? And I think I really like what prma, and by the way the slides are outdated, but it's fine.
And just to quote Prma this morning, maybe it is about issuing to the user, right? Because you issu, if you think about that, the point is to issue to the user and user had a choice, you don't start with issuing to the what, right?
It be, it becomes cluster or clear that the, the user now doesn't have a choice in the situation of that one country for example.
But now back to the issuers, right? So for issuers it's purple because I do believe public sector has to lead here and turn the data where authentic source of the data is within the private sector. And I do think the private sector has been voting with use cases that that is the gap in the current ecosystem. Like we do need this verifiable public sector data in a digital format and but also that alone cannot cover it all.
So we know we heard Visa talking about turning Ivans into credentials potentially, you know, telecom turning the mobile phone number into verifiable credentials. So we do need private sector to start thinking about that as well. But the key is the, and again obviously there is color of blue here as well because we need public sector digitized as well, right? But that alone, if, if everything's a public sector wallet issue or verifier, that might get us closer to, you know, the second scenario where users using once a year to, I dunno, file taxes digitally or something.
So how do we get the private sector accelerated here?
Yeah, the slides are old but let's go through, so four key points for the verifiers identify business drivers in former strategy consultant me says that again in the capitalism as a business, you do things either because it helps you drive down costs or it helps you grow top level. Top level grow grows, right?
And I have been talking to few, I think one of the countries mostly has been working on, so the campaign where the talk to the verifiers and explain to them that the cost driving cost savings and time savings is what is interesting for them and that helped a lot with adoption. So angles like that. And it is a hard question, right? A second bullet point are what's really a better solution? I mean there is a regulation but is it really a better solution? And I think net keeps challenging us on that.
But what about sign PDF, right?
Maybe the answer is not binary, maybe it's not, you know, was or not. Well it's maybe there's French where sign PDF for example can be a credential in the wallet. Thank you for idea.
So, and this is another kind of key part where I already mentioned in the panel, but I think for the veers it is about the, the data that you actually want, right? I don't think it's about the hundred of credentials flowing around, it's more about handful of credentials that verifiers have the clear understanding of this end to end user journey, right? Because once you have that, the value becomes very clear.
So only after you have identified that you can start thinking about who is the issuer that can give me that data and to which wallet issuer is willing to trust an issuer is willing to issue the data into.
And then building a system, once you've identified what you're doing, what you're doing, you need to have the technology running. And the obvious question is, do you wanna build it yourself? Do you wanna use open source or do you wanna, you wanna buy it? So one of the big questions I do get asked a lot, especially at this EIC too, switch tech stack to use.
And I think the answer is, so two things to point out here. So one is, the analogy I came up today is it's like religion. It's like for Christianity you still have Protestant and you still have Catholics, right? They have been bloody wars, but there's no conversions. You still have to, right? So we are living in the world with multiple tech stacks, right? Whether it we like it or not. And I don't think we can afford in terms of momentum, in terms of market conditions to keep arguing on that.
Like they're more important things like user experience that we should be focusing more and more on.
So it makes it harder for the vendors, it makes it harder for the cross-border use cases. Because essentially what it means is certain players have to support multiple tax stacks if they really want to interpret and enable different use cases, right? So that concerns you may be time to speak up, but I think at this point, multiple tax taxes for we're living in. And the second point that's on slide, so what I said was not really on the slide. The second point here is at least in Europe, right?
I think this slide would depend on the jurisdiction you're in, but the big point here is the timescale matters, right? There's one tax stock that if you're looking for the next one to two years, honestly timeframe that you need to build system in production to, you know, write this momentum, prove to the users there's value.
There is, you don't have much choice what to build depending on the jurisdiction you are, you know what you need to build in, right? So you should recognize the tech stack for the, for on the left hand side is would be what's in a RF, right?
But that doesn't mean that we have to stop thinking or talking about anything, any other technologies, right? It, it, it doesn't, there's absolutely value in it. Like the left side tech stack on the left hand side is just a tech stack thought, you know, the best possible right now, but there always should be better in terms of privacy, security, usability, whatnot. So that's where, you know, we don't know what the future holds. We need to keep researching, we need to keep investing, we need to keep discussing. But I do really think it is important to separate these two in terms of discussion.
Again, like we, I don't think we can afford to slow down arguing within the left timeframe. So a lot of people do talk about user experience, which does matter a lot. A lot of users are non-technical. So how do you explain those to them in no tech, low tech terms? And I think one thing someone made me realize recently is when the user in interact with the wallets they onboarding to the wallet, there would usually be another person helping that, you know, as it's a government public official or private sector, whoever.
And it does matter whether, whether that person presents the wallet in a way of like, can you please download it? Like if you download it, it really gonna make your life easier or my life easier. It's gonna be, you know, faster, quicker versus, you know, that person being like, oh yeah, that, that download QR code on the wall.
Yeah, no, don't bother, let me just do it manually. What's your, what's your date of birth?
You know, those kind of, I think, you know, having the understanding of the, the people, I, I don't know, I think we should be talking more about that.
So, so that was a lot of, I think SAN can be generalized outside the EU as well, but a lot was, you know, based on I think my experience mainly in the, in the EU context.
So yeah, it's an old slide, but basically what I was trying to illustrate here was maybe it's so about if we go back to the first slide where there was this DPI where once you have the regulation and you have the technical stack and you have the, you know, how you get this private sector innovation, the question is kind of showing the beginning. Once you know, the public sector, private sector knows which part is which part they're responsible for or should be pushing for. And there's hopefully no over dependency.
Hopefully, you know, no things like, you know, it's, it's not moving this, you're not giving me that or that. And on top of that, if the questions that we just saw can be answered in a constructive manner, probably that's where we can, we can cross a chasm and get the, get the wallets on mainstream where users are very happy using them. You think that's all I had? Thank you for being here.
