Digital identity wallets are expected to change how we receive, store, and present digital credentials, ranging from national IDs and driver’s licenses to insurance data and educational credentials, across both online and offline contexts. Unsurprisingly, digital identity wallets usually operate in tightly regulated domains that impose strict security- and privacy-related requirements.
Because of this, native apps have so far been the default choice for implementing digital identity wallets. Leaving aside the quick, surface-level statement that “the web is not secure,” the underlying reasons why web apps are often considered a poor fit ultimately boil down to:
the lack of mechanisms to ensure the authenticity and integrity of client-side code, which is a prerequisite for issuing wallet attestations and complying with wallet certification schemes, and limited access to OS-level capabilities and APIs (DirectSockets, BLE, NFC), which are required to keep traffic private from backend components or to implement proximity-based flows.
At wwWallet.org, we believe that web-app–based digital identity wallets can not only match native-app characteristics, but also exceed them in many areas, provided the blockers above are addressed.
Because of this, we are very interested in understanding the IWA roadmap beyond ChromeOS, specifically the plans for IWA support on other desktop OS and on Android.
Of particular interest to us is closing the gap between IWAs and native apps in the context of the Digital Credentials API implementations on Chrome and Android.
A demo of wwWallet is available at https://demo.wwwallet.org
Digital identity wallets are expected to change how we receive, store, and present digital credentials, ranging from national IDs and driver’s licenses to insurance data and educational credentials, across both online and offline contexts. Unsurprisingly, digital identity wallets usually operate in tightly regulated domains that impose strict security- and privacy-related requirements.
Because of this, native apps have so far been the default choice for implementing digital identity wallets. Leaving aside the quick, surface-level statement that “the web is not secure,” the underlying reasons why web apps are often considered a poor fit ultimately boil down to:
the lack of mechanisms to ensure the authenticity and integrity of client-side code, which is a prerequisite for issuing wallet attestations and complying with wallet certification schemes, and limited access to OS-level capabilities and APIs (DirectSockets, BLE, NFC), which are required to keep traffic private from backend components or to implement proximity-based flows.
At wwWallet.org, we believe that web-app–based digital identity wallets can not only match native-app characteristics, but also exceed them in many areas, provided the blockers above are addressed.
Because of this, we are very interested in understanding the IWA roadmap beyond ChromeOS, specifically the plans for IWA support on other desktop OS and on Android.
Of particular interest to us is closing the gap between IWAs and native apps in the context of the Digital Credentials API implementations on Chrome and Android.
A demo of wwWallet is available at https://demo.wwwallet.org