Linux Foundation Announces an Intent to Form the OpenWallet Foundation

A Consortium of Companies and Non Profit Organizations Collaborating to Create an Open Source Software Stack to Advance a Plurality of Interoperable Wallets

DUBLIN—September 13, 2022—The Linux Foundation, a global nonprofit organization enabling innovation through open source, today announced the intention to form the OpenWallet Foundation (OWF), a new collaborative effort to develop open source software to support interoperability for a wide range of wallet use cases. The initiative already benefits from strong support including leading companies across technology, public sector, and industry vertical segments, and standardization organizations.

The mission of the OWF is to develop a secure, multi-purpose open source engine anyone can use to build interoperable wallets. The OWF aims to set best practices for digital wallet technology through collaboration on open source code for use as a starting point for anyone who strives to build interoperable, secure, and privacy-protecting wallets.

The OWF does not intend to publish a wallet itself, nor offer credentials or create any new standards. The community will focus on building an open source software engine that other organizations and companies can leverage to develop their own digital wallets.  The wallets will support a wide variety of use cases from identity to payments to digital keys and aim to achieve feature parity with the best available wallets.

Daniel Goldscheider, who started the initiative, said, “With the OpenWallet Foundation we push for a plurality of wallets based on a common core. I couldn’t be happier with the support this initiative has received already and the home it found at the Linux Foundation.”

Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemllin said, “We are convinced that digital wallets will play a critical role for digital societies. Open software is the key to interoperability and security. We are delighted to host the OpenWallet Foundation and excited for its potential.”

OpenWallet Foundation will be featured in a keynote presentation at Open Source Summit Europe on 14 September 2022 at 9:00 AM IST (GMT +1) and a panel at 12:10 PM IST (GMT +1). In order to participate virtually and/or watch the sessions on demand, you can register here. 

Pramod Varma, Chief Architect Aadhaar & India Stack, said, “Verifiable credentials are becoming an essential digital empowerment tool for billions of people and small entities. India has been at the forefront of it and is going all out to convert all physical certificates into digitally verifiable credentials via the very successful Digilocker system. I am very excited about the OWF effort to create an interoperable and open source credential wallet engine to supercharge the credentialing infrastructure globally.”

“Universal digital wallet infrastructure will create the ability to carry tokenized identity, money, and objects from place to place in the digital world. Massive business model change is coming, and the winning digital business will be the one that earns trust to directly access the real data in our wallets to create much better digital experiences,” said David Treat, Global Metaverse Continuum Business Group & Blockchain lead, Accenture. “We are excited to be part of the launch and development of an open-source basis for digital wallet infrastructure to help ensure consistency, interoperability, and portability with privacy, security, and inclusiveness at the core by design.”

Drummond Reed, Director of Trust Services at Avast, a brand of NortonLifeLock, said, “We’re on a mission to protect digital freedom for everyone. Digital freedom starts with the services used by the individual and the ability to reclaim their personal information and reestablish trust in digital exchanges. Great end point services start with the core of digital identity wallet technology. We are proud to be a founding supporter of the OpenWallet Foundation because collaboration, interoperability, and open ecosystems are essential to the trusted digital future that we envision.”

“The mobile wallet industry has seen significant advances in the last decade, changing the way people manage and spend their money, and the tasks that these wallets can perform have rapidly expanded. Mobile wallets are turning into digital IDs and a place to store documents whereby the security requirements are further enhanced,” said Taka Kawasaki CoFounder of Authlete Inc. “We understand the importance of standards that ensure interoperability as a member of the OpenID Foundation and in the same way we are excited to work with the Linux Foundation to develop a robust implementation to ensure the highest levels in security.”

“Providing secure identity and validated credential services are key for enabling a high assurance health care service. The OpenWallet Foundation could contribute a key role in promoting the deployment of highly effective secure digital health care systems that benefits the industry,” said Robert Samuel, Executive Director of Technology Research & Innovation, CVS Health.

“Daon provides the digital identity verification/proofing and authentication technology that enables digital trust at scale and on a global basis”, said Conor White, President – Americas at Daon, “Our experience with VeriFLY demonstrated the future importance of digital wallets for consumers and we look forward to supporting the OpenWallet Foundation.”

“We are building and issuing wallets for decentralized identity applications for several years now. Momentum and interest for this area has grown tremendously, far beyond our own community. It is now more important than ever that a unified wallet core embracing open standards is created, with the ambition to become the global standard. The best industry players are pulling together under the OpenWallet Foundation. esatus AG is proud to be among them as experience, expertise, and technology contributor,” said Dr. Andre Kudra, CIO, esatus AG 

Kaliya Young, Founder & Principal, Identity Woman in Business, said, “As our lives become more and more digital, it is critical to have strong and interoperable digital wallets that can properly safeguard our digital properties, whether it is our identities, data, or money. We are very excited to see the emergence of the OpenWallet Foundation, particularly its mission to bring key stakeholders together to create a core wallet engine (instead of another wallet) that can empower the actual wallet providers to build better products at lower cost. We look forward to supporting this initiative by leveraging our community resources and knowledge/expertise to develop a truly collaborative movement.”

Masa Mashita, Senior Vice President, Strategic Innovations, JCB Co., Ltd. said, “Wallets for the identity management as well as the payment will be a key function for the future user interface. The concept of OpenWallet will be beneficial for the interoperability among multiple industries and jurisdictions.”

“Secure and open wallets will allow individuals the world over to store, combine and use their credentials in new ways – allowing them to seamlessly assert their identity, manage payments, access services, etc., and empower them with control of their data. This brings together many of our efforts in India around identity, payments, credentials, data empowerment, health, etc. in an open manner, and will empower billions of people around the world,” said Sanjay Jain, Chairman of the Technology Committee of MOSIP.

“The Open Identity Exchange (OIX) welcomes and supports the creation of the OpenWallet Foundation. The creation of open source components that will allow wallet providers to work to standards and trust framework policies in a consistent way is entirely complementary to our own work on open and interoperable Digital Identities. OIX’s Global Interoperability working group is already defining a ‘trust framework policy characteristics methodology,’ as part of our contribution to GAIN. This will allow any trust framework to systematically describe itself to an open wallet, so that a ‘smart wallet’ can seamlessly adapt to the rules of a new framework within which the user wants to assert credentials,” said Nick Mothershaw, Chief Identity Strategist, OIX.

“Okta’s vision is to enable anyone to safely use any technology”, says Randy Nasson, Director of Product Management at Okta. “Digital wallets are emerging as go-to applications for conducting financial transactions, providing identity and vital data, and storing medical information such as vaccination status. Wallets will expand to include other credentials, including professional and academic certifications, membership status, and more. Digital credentials, including their issuance, storage in wallets, and presentation, will impact the way humans authenticate and authorize themselves with digital systems in the coming decade. Okta is excited about the efforts of the OpenWallet Foundation and the Linux Foundation to provide standards-based, open wallet technology for developers and organizations around the world.”

“The OpenID Foundation welcomes the formation of the OpenWallet Foundation and its efforts to create an open-source implementation of open and interoperable technical standards, certification and best practices.” – Nat Sakimura, Chairman, OpenID Foundation.

 “We believe the future of online trust and privacy starts with a system for individuals to take control over their digital identity, and interoperability will create broad accessibility,” says Rakesh Thaker, Chief Development Officer at Ping Identity. “We intend to actively participate and contribute to creating common specifications for secure, robust credential wallets to empower people with control over when and with whom they share their personal data.”

Wallet technologies that are open and interoperable are a key factor in enabling citizens to protect their privacy in the digital world. At polypoly – an initiative backed by the first pan-European cooperative for data – we absolutely believe that privacy is a human right! We are already working on open source wallets and are excited to collaborate with others and to contribute to the OpenWallet Foundation,” said Lars Eilebrecht, CISO, polypoly.

“Digital credentials and the wallets that manage them form the trust foundation of a digital society. With the future set to be characterised by a plurality of wallets and underlying standards, broad interoperability is key to delivering seamless digital interactions for citizens. Procivis is proud to support the efforts of the OpenWallet Foundation to build a secure, interoperable, and open wallet engine which enables every individual to retain sovereignty over their digital identities,”  Daniel Gasteiger, Chief Executive Officer, Procivis AG.

“It is essential to cross the boundaries between humans, enterprises, and systems to create value in a fully connected world. There is an urgent need for a truly portable, interoperable identity & credentialing backbone for all digital-first processes in government, business, peer-to-peer, smart city systems, and the Metaverse. The OpenWallet Foundation will establish high-quality wallet components that can be assembled into SW solutions unlocking a new universe of next-level digitization, security, and compliance,” said Dr. Carsten Stöcker, CEO Spherity & Chairman of the Supervisory Board IDunion SCE.

“Transmute has long promoted open source standards as the foundation for building evolved solutions that challenge the status quo. Transmute believes any organization should be empowered to create a digital wallet that can securely manage identifiers, credentials, currencies, and payments while complying with regulatory requirements regarding trusted applications and devices. Transmute supports a future of technology that will reflect exactly what OpenWallet Foundation wants to achieve: one that breaks with convention to foster innovation in a secure, interoperable way, benefitting competitive companies, consumers, and developers alike,” said Orie Steele, Co-Founder and CTO of Transmute.

“The Trust Over IP (ToIP) Foundation is proud to support the momentum of an industry-wide open-source engine for digital wallets. We believe this can be a key building block in our mission to establish an open standard trust layer for the Internet. We look forward to our Design Principles and Reference Architecture benefitting this endeavor and collaborating closely with this new Linux Foundation project,” said Judith Fleenor, Director of Strategic Engagement, Trust Over IP Foundation.

For more information about the project and how to participate in this work, please visit: openwallet.foundation.