Europe has opened a door to a universal wallet

It's nice that the EU is giving room to such innovation, but I wanted to point out that stuff like this is quite widespread in India:

Every shop on the road nowadays has a QR code you scan to make a payment using any UPI[0] compatible app. Thus, the age old problem of a shop not having change is quite rare nowadays (if you're not a minor that is, because all UPI apps are 18+). UPI is centered around your phone number, which is linked to your bank account as part of KYC. Thus, you can make a payment to anyone who doesn't even have UPI using their phone number, thus transferring funds directly into their bank account.

DigiLocker[1] is gaining popularity, with some airports allowing you in without physical ID if you have your ID on the app and scan yourself in. I've only been to one airport that does this before, and I sadly was not aware of it at the time.

It's nice that more and more countries are realizing the usefulness of this as tech becomes more and more ubiquitous and accessible to everyone.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiLocker

So one stolen phone really is enough to now "steal one's identity", at least insofar as payment, day-to-day access to (and government tracking of) e.g. transportation, and other daily activities?

And how are damaged phones handled?

I feel like far too much faith is being invested in far too fragile, fungible devices.

There’s no way this is an improvement over cash when it comes to privacy. It’s an onramp to a vast surveillance state that might be benevolent now but can’t be counted on to stay that way indefinitely. In fact, building the infrastructure to make authoritarian control easy, also makes it more likely.

It’s not hard to imagine a future where Dutch farmers go to a gas (or charging) station on their way to a protest find they suddenly can’t use their money.

While I feel the need of a nation-wide (EU-wide) digital identity because it's damn absurd to have eIDs and being not able to use them for all public services as mere keys, I do reject full strength the wallet concept.

IDs are serious business, smartphones are surveillance devices, out of the government and the citizen controls and connected 24/7/365, they MUST NOT be used for anything serious. I do want to have a simple NFC reader for public authority and activities needed some data from the citizens (like a bank to open an account, or just a major-age verification to sell alcohol at a supermarket, being just able to to se age) but FROM MY eID card, not from a mobile app.

The system could be pretty simple, a grocery store authenticate as itself to a public service, the public service get the citizen ID, and know the grocery store can only get a "major age or not", no privacy issue in the process, no needs to flash Qr and so on. Similarly a police officer can read ANY eID document (let's say driving license, national ID card, passport, even a public school card) and from it accessing other docs depending on the activity he/she declare, again no privacy issue. But again no damn need of mobile stuff.

Oh, and aside, public money, public code, so all IDs MUST be open hardware and open-source, the chip, the middlewire and the service as well. So the "no privacy issue" is a thing any citizen can acknowledge or not.

This seems like a misunderstanding of what eID is.

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/display/D...

eID is a federated identity system that uses national electronic ID systems as the identity sources. That's useful especially for apps on the EU level, e.g. for customs, to submit what you're importing as a company.

In practice, I won't be able to use my phone as a replacement for my passport when traveling internationally. But I might be able to use my phone, in combination with my national ID card which has a NFC chip inside, to submit a government form in another EU country.

> Is it a digital dream or a high-tech nightmare?

It could be done in a way that would work well, but it won't, because there's more money to be made by abusing people. So put me in the "nightmare" camp.

I wish this kind of projects were being on prediction markets, so I could make good money by betting on them failing, like they always do.

"After your flight touches down, you collect a rental car. You flash a digital driver’s licence to unlock the door. You drive to your new home. On the way, you stop off at a store and bag up groceries,"

... your phone screen cracks, and you can't afford a new one, even if there was a way you could pay for it without a phone ...

This effortless convenience of spending money might be a corporate-technology dream, but it's going to be a nightmare for so many people.

Wow, some pretty strong opinions here. Did somebody say Nazis?

Tech innovations are always a mixed bag, but there are some great ideas in this, like selective disclosure, where you don't have to reveal all your personal info (address on driver's license) when proving your age. Is uploading a picture of your physical credentials to pretty random web sites supposed to be a better solution?

I also think people deserve to have well described data and interactions, and their "wallet" should become a coherent place of organizing long term information. These standards create that possibility. Letting companies dominate and invent things to their needs as they go along is not a better solution.

It takes some strength from governments to do this properly, which some will point to as backward (witness the reaction to iPhone AI features). But companies have not found the end point of innovation, it needs to be kept open and directed by broad people needs, not the current shiny.

Bernners lee is being a useful idiot on SOLID. It's a pipe dream that doesn't help anyone but companies trying to own your data INSTEAD of google. Basically replacing one evil with another, not solving the problem.

It is 100% a worse option than a cloud drive.

Anyone in the digital ID space knows there's a war going on. States will adopt digital ID. And everyone is rushing to own it.

That website is just blank for me. Edit: Even on multiple browser.

The Nazis were literally a European organisation and still in living memory. They've still been prosecuting a few of them here and there. It is quite distressing at how quickly people start talking about the virtue of these grand centralised identity systems. They are a huge threat to minorities, dissidents and troublemakers.

A messy, badly communicating shambles might well turn out to be the optimum approach to this problem. There is reason to believe that efficiency is a bad thing when it comes to being identified and tracked.