What People Want From the EU Digital Identity Wallet: 2026 Survey Findings

Selective disclosure means sharing only the specific fact a check requires, such as a country of residence, instead of handing over a full identity document. New survey data suggests it may be the feature that decides whether Europeans use the EU Digital Identity Wallet at all. In a survey of 2,000 adults in France and Germany published on 8 September 2026, 63% said they would be more likely to use the wallet if they could confirm certain details without having to disclose all their information.

The survey was commissioned by an identity verification provider and carried out by Sapio Research in June 2026, with 1,000 respondents in each country aged 18 to 80, weighted by age and gender. It lands about three months before every EU member state must make a wallet available to its citizens.

Key takeaways

• 63% would be more likely to use the wallet if they could share only certain details without revealing everything else.
• 46% often abandon a transaction when a process is too complex or takes too long.
• 47% would accept additional checks if those checks increased their security, while only 13% would choose fewer checks if fraud risk rose.
• 51% have never heard of the EU Digital Identity Wallet, and a further 27% have heard of it but are unsure what it does.
• To open a bank account, 24% still prefer verifying in person and 14% would choose a digital identity wallet.

Awareness is still the first hurdle

Member states are required to offer a wallet by December 2026, and the survey reports that banks will be required to accept them by December 2027. Public awareness is well behind that schedule. Only about one in five respondents said they clearly understand what the wallet is.

That gap matters for any business planning to accept wallet credentials. A verification option that most customers do not recognise will not be chosen at the moment of sign-up, however strong its security properties are. We covered the regulatory timeline and the state of national rollouts in our analysis of the December 2026 deadline.

Slow verification costs completed transactions

Nearly half of respondents (46%) said they often abandon a transaction when the process is too complex or takes too long. For a business, that abandonment happens at an expensive point in the journey. By the time someone reaches an identity check, the budget spent on advertising, referrals or affiliate partners to bring them there has already been spent. If they leave during verification, that acquisition cost produces no customer.

This is why verification design is a growth question as much as a compliance one. Every extra field, document upload or waiting step raises the chance that a person the business has already paid to acquire walks away.

People accept more checks, not more exposure

The survey also asked what would matter most when deciding whether to use the wallet.

Read alongside the finding that 47% would accept additional checks for better security, the picture is consistent. People are not asking for less verification. They want verification that protects them and asks for no more personal data than the decision requires. A check that confirms only the detail a decision depends on satisfies both priorities at once, while a check that collects a full passport scan to answer the same question satisfies neither.

Bank onboarding preferences are still split

When asked how they would prefer to verify their identity to open a bank account, no single method came close to a majority.

A 14% preference for a product most people have not yet used is a reasonable starting point rather than a verdict. The more practical lesson for financial institutions is that customers will arrive expecting different methods for several years. Wallet credentials are best treated as an additional route alongside document and biometric checks, not a replacement for them.

What this means for businesses that verify users

Ask for the attribute, not the document. Most onboarding decisions depend on a small number of facts, such as country of residence or whether a person has already passed a regulated check. Designing the flow around those facts shortens it and reduces the personal data a business has to store and protect. Our guide to qualified electronic attestations of attributes explains how attribute-level credentials are defined under eIDAS 2.0.

Treat abandonment at verification as an acquisition metric. If marketing reports cost per sign-up but nobody measures drop-off at the identity step, the most expensive leak in the funnel stays invisible.

Plan to accept credentials people already hold. AIR Identity lets a platform request only the fact it needs, such as whether a person lives in a given market. The user approves sharing a credential they already hold in their AIR Account, and the platform receives a cryptographically proven answer with minimal data retention, so privacy obligations remain intact. That makes it possible to find and onboard people who already meet a platform's criteria, an approach we describe as verified user acquisition. It also means nobody pays to re-verify a fact that has already been proven.

Practical steps

Map the facts behind each check. List every point where you verify users and write down the specific decision each check supports. Most flows collect far more than those decisions need.

Measure drop-off at the verification step. Track completion rates for each method you offer, by channel, so acquisition cost and verification friction can be read together.

Keep existing methods while adding credentials. Document, NFC and biometric checks will remain the preferred route for many customers. Add wallet and credential acceptance as an extra path rather than forcing a switch.

Explain what you do not collect. With 31% prioritising control over what they share, stating plainly that a check only confirms the one detail it needs is a trust signal, not just a privacy notice.

Frequently asked questions

What did the 2026 EU Digital Identity Wallet consumer survey find?

A survey of 2,000 adults in France and Germany, published on 8 September 2026, found that 63% would be more likely to use the wallet if they could confirm certain details without disclosing all their information, 46% often abandon transactions that are too slow or complex, and 51% had never heard of the wallet.

What is selective disclosure in a digital identity wallet?

Selective disclosure is the ability to share only the specific attribute a service needs, for example that a person holds a valid professional licence, rather than presenting a full identity document containing name, date of birth, address and document number.

When will the EU Digital Identity Wallet be available?

Under eIDAS 2.0, every EU member state must make at least one European Digital Identity Wallet available to citizens, residents and businesses by December 2026. National rollout progress varies, with only a small number of member states in production as of mid-2026.

Why do people abandon identity verification?

In the survey, 46% of respondents said they often abandon a transaction when the process is too complex or takes too long. Long forms, document uploads, repeated checks and requests for more information than the service appears to need are common causes.

Will banks accept the EU Digital Identity Wallet for account opening?

According to the survey report, banks will be required to accept the wallet by December 2027. Opening a bank account was also one of the use cases tested in the EU's large-scale wallet pilots. Customer preference is still divided, with 14% choosing a wallet and 24% preferring in-person verification.

Related reading

• EU Digital Identity Wallet: the December 2026 deadline
• What is a QEAA? Qualified electronic attestations of attributes explained
• Age assurance accuracy standards: the 2026 benchmarks
• Government digital credentials in 2026

More from AIR: AIR Identity, verified user acquisition, or browse the full AIR blog.

Onboarding users who could prove what you need in one step? See how AIR Identity works, or talk to our team.