The World Bank has published guidelines on the implementation of national digital wallets. The Bretton Woods Institute offers a procedure for countries to verify information on which a person's access to services depends. The recommendation has an international distribution infrastructure: the bank's digital identity and payments program covers over 80 countries. The debate over digital control continues in the everyday life of public procurement.
The wallet connects 3 parties: the issuer signs the information, the owner presents it and the verification organization resolves the service issue. The bank or the border guard rely on the certificate, the validity of which depends on the issuing authority. In a 2018 report, the World Economic Forum specifically linked digital identity to access to products and services. World Bank leadership provides governments with practical means to establish such an approach. The right to issue or cancel a certificate is weighted behind every desk that is obliged to check it.
Implementation in stages allows the expansion of coverage without simultaneous restructuring of all institutions. Closed and open trials give way to a pilot, then to mass adoption and cross-border acceptance. According to the repeated report published in the guide, the wallets are proposed to become free and voluntary. Alternatives to a smartphone include a chip card, cloud service and paper with verifiable data. Media selection maintains a dependency on those identities. If institutions close their previous ways of service, participation will effectively become mandatory.
The World Bank itself takes this obligation into account in its identification principles: the first identification card must be issued free of charge when basic rights and services cannot be used without it. Freeness removes the financial barrier at registration. After that, each new institution that receives a shared digital document adds another area of life where the cancellation of the document will have consequences.