The Linux FoundationThe European branch of ‘s has formally launched the OpenWallet Foundation (OWF), a new collaborative effort designed to support interoperability between digital wallets through open source software.
The release comes about five months after the Linux Foundation first revealed plans to establish the OWF, shortly before generated a region-specific entity He called the Linux Foundation Europe which is where the OWF will now officially reside.
While PayPal, Google, and Apple are among the most well-known providers of digital wallets, allowing consumers to conduct financial transactions in-store or online, digital wallets are increasingly being used to store all kinds of virtual goods, from student identification to driver’s licenses. . On top of that, burgeoning technologies like the metaverse and cryptography are giving rise to increased use cases for digital wallets.
But one thing all of these various environments have in common is that existing digital wallets, for the most part, don’t work well with each other: an Apple Pay die-hard can’t send money to its Google Pay brethren. And that’s why OWF sets out to create an “open source engine” that can power interoperable digital wallets across myriad use cases, including identity, payments, and storage of personal credentials, such as employment certification and education.
Along with today’s release, OWF and the Linux Foundation will also published a new report to highlight the importance of a more open digital wallet ecosystem, noting that the full value of all digital wallet transactions were $15.9 trillion in 2021. The market is important, as is the need to help businesses avoid vendor lock-in, which is one of OWF’s main selling points.
It is worth emphasizing that the OWF will not build a digital wallet itself or develop new standards: it wants to create the technological core that any other third party can use to power their own digital wallets.
The OWF was the brainchild of daniel goldscheiderOpen banking startup CEO Yes.comwho spearheaded the initial development of the project when he joined the Linux Foundation.
“We’re really focusing on the layer between the standards and the wallets, we’re not going to create standards and we’re not going to create a wallet, we’re focusing on open source software above those standards, but below the wallets,” Goldscheider said. TechCrunch. “And our role model is really the browser engine. What’s interesting about navigation engines is that they’re not one thing, when you zoom in there’s a lot going on: there’s HTML and JavaScript and audio codecs and video codecs. So the same is true for the OpenWallet Foundation. There will be no OpenWallet code base, or OpenWallet architecture.”
So what we’re talking about here is multiple different projects, running in tandem, incorporating different languages designed for different digital wallet use cases.
bound for Europe
It is notable that the OWF has chosen to establish itself under the auspices of the European operation of the Linux Foundation. Indeed, Europe is spearheading a broader push against the “walled garden” ethos of big tech, and is currently moving forward with new rules to enforce interoperability between messaging platforms, while the US. is making similar plans Through the ACCESS Law.
However, specifically for the purposes of the OWF, Europe is also looking to incorporate digital wallets into its current eIDAS (Electronic Identification, Authentication and Trust Services), effectively providing all EU citizens with a single digital identity for transactions and verification across all businesses and public administrations. The European Commission also recently set the required specifications develop a Europe-wide interoperable digital identity wallet based on common standards.
And it is against that backdrop that OWF launched with the backing of a host of parties with a vested interest in a more open digital wallet infrastructure.
OWF’s initial sponsors and “core” members include Visa, Avast’s parent company, Gen Digital, Accenture and Huawei’s US research and development subsidiary Futurewei Technologies, which apparently pays an annual fee of €200,000 ($213,000) which entitles them to vote on the Technical Advisory Committee and the Broadcasting Committee, rights not granted to those at lower levels of membership. In fact, “general” members pay up to €50,000 a year, depending on the number of employees they have, and initial entrants include American Express, Deutsche Telecom, Swisscom, Thoma Bravo-owned Ping Identity, Spruce, Esatus, Fynbos , IDnow, IndyKite, and Intesi.
Elsewhere, OWF also offers associate and government levels, with initial members including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Connection Science, OpenID Foundation, DIDAS, Hyperledger Foundation, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Identity 2020 Systems, IDunion SCE, MOSIP , Open Identity Exchange. , Secure Identity Alliance, The Digital Dollar Project, Rovira i Virgili University and Trust Over IP Foundation.
There are a couple of notable member omissions since today’s official launch: In September, Okta and CVS Health were name verified as likely founding members, but it looks like they won’t be joining after all. TechCrunch has reached out to all parties for comment, but we have yet to hear back at press time.
The OWF is the latest in a line of similar initiatives created by the Linux Foundation to bring interoperability to various industries. In December, it partnered with Meta, Microsoft, AWS, and TomTom to counter Google’s maps dominance through the Overture Maps Foundation. And Linux Foundation Europe also recently launched Project Sylva together with TelefónicaOrange, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia, Ericsson and Nokia, with a view to building an open source and interoperable cloud framework for European telcos and providers.
