European companies are heading into a difficult compliance transition as eIDAS 2.0 and the Anti-Money Laundering Regulation take effect. Firms will need to accept the new European Digital Identity Wallet while continuing to support existing national electronic ID schemes and other verification methods already used across the region. For businesses operating across borders, that means more overlapping systems for onboarding, authentication, and fraud controls, along with higher costs and technical strain.
Identity provider Signicat said it launched a unified platform, called eID and Wallet Hub, to address that fragmentation. The company is framing the current moment as a transition period where the new wallet framework starts to arrive, but older identity rails remain essential for day-to-day operations.
Parallel identity systems will remain in place for years
The European Digital Identity Wallet is part of eIDAS 2.0 and is intended to standardize identity verification across the EU. But the rollout will not immediately displace current systems. For the next several years, businesses will need to handle customers who still rely on national IDs and banking-based identity tools, while also supporting users who adopt the new wallet.
That affects basic functions at the center of regulated business activity. Customer onboarding, identity checks, and compliance reviews must be able to satisfy both the new wallet model and legacy national frameworks. AMLR adds another layer, requiring identity verification processes to meet stricter anti-money laundering standards at the same time.
Allard Keuter, Head of Authentication & Wallets at Signicat, said digital identity in Europe will be “organized chaos” for the next three years. His point is straightforward: companies will be legally required to accept a new wallet that many customers do not yet have, without dropping the national and banking ID systems they already depend on. That makes this more than a launch issue. It is a prolonged transition shaped by uneven adoption across countries and user groups.
One integration point for wallets, eIDs, and biometrics
Signicat’s answer is a single integration layer. Through the eID and Wallet Hub, businesses can connect to the new European Digital Identity Wallets, existing national eID schemes, and other identity sources such as biometric verification. The aim is to cut down the need for separate integrations and maintenance work for each method.
According to the company, the hub already processes more than 500 million transactions a year, indicating existing scale in the identity verification market. A centralized interface may reduce development overhead, though it also shifts part of the operational dependency toward an outside provider.
The platform is built around a hybrid infrastructure model. Businesses can retrieve data directly from a user’s wallet, or access information through Signicat’s wider identity network. That matters in practice because many users may not have adopted the wallet yet, and some data a company needs may not be stored in the wallet at all.
A policy shift aimed at more than 450 million citizens
The wallet rollout is part of a broader EU policy effort to create a unified digital identity framework. The system is expected to affect more than 450 million citizens, with a stated target of 80% adoption by 2030.
For businesses, this is a structural change in identity infrastructure rather than a simple product update. Companies that once relied mainly on national systems or private verification channels now have to integrate a standardized European layer while keeping compatibility with what already exists. That changes how identity data is accessed, stored, and processed.
AMLR makes the transition heavier by tying identity workflows more closely to financial crime controls. Platforms like Signicat’s hub are being positioned as a practical way to absorb regulatory change without rebuilding systems again and again. Even so, the core market challenge remains: wallet adoption is unlikely to move at the same pace across Europe, and identity systems will need to keep working through that uneven rollout.