“Meet the People of Aptitude” introduces the experts and innovators working behind the Aptitude project, one of Europe’s large-scale pilots testing the European Digital Identity Wallet in real-life conditions.
In this interview, we meet Florian Andreae, who leads Payments and Banking at Aptitude. Payments and Banking team’s work focuses on exploring how the European Digital Identity Wallet can transform the way citizens authenticate and pay online. From strong customer authentication to combining payments with trusted identity attributes, Florian brings a clear vision of the real added value the European wallet can bring to everyday payments.
What is the main role of Payments and Banking within the Aptitude project?
“Within the Aptitude project, our work will explore the use of the European Digital Identity Wallet within banking and payment use cases. We will explore how banks can use the wallet to facilitate strong customer authentication. We will also explore how the wallet can be used in combination with payment means to initiate payments on a merchant site, and how to combine the wallet with additional attestations to facilitate use cases that are not currently possible.”
What are the main challenges in your area of responsibility?
“It will be challenging because we have a lot of participants and we have to identify the actual use cases we will pilot. There are multiple payment schemes and multiple banks. To pilot a complete payment use case you need three things: a bank to support the payment scheme, the payment scheme itself, and a retailer accepting the payment scheme.”
What is the added value of a European approach compared to global payment platforms?
“The wallet can be a secure tool for payments if it supports payment flows that are closely related to what customers know today. Payment is a highly digital process already and everyone knows how to use it. We have to get the European Digital Identity Wallet to that level and that is a key focus point for Aptitude. A major advantage of payments in the European Digital Identity Wallet is exactly the combination of payment with other attributes. With this level of trust, this is not currently possible. So there is real added value the European identity wallet can bring to payments.”
The Aptitude project brings together partners from 12 EU Member States and Ukraine to test the European Digital Identity Wallet in real-life scenarios such as travel, payments and digital services. The goal is to make digital identity secure, trusted and citizen-controlled, while ensuring services can work seamlessly across borders.
Learn more about the Payments and Banking use case: https://aptitude.digital-identity-wallet.eu/wallet-use/payments-with-strong-customer-authentication/
Learn more about the Aptitude Consortium: https://aptitude.digital-identity-wallet.eu/our-consortium/
