What would be the Open Wallet Foundation project?

In this article, we will quickly discuss what OWF is, its purposes, and who its supporters are. In addition to how OWF could contribute to the development of a wallet that will accommodate existing standards such as W3C, ISO, Decentralized Identity Foundation, and Trust Over IP (ToIP). Thus, seeking to create a unique standard for interoperable and much safer wallets.

The Open Wallet Foundation (OWF) was created to support the development of portable, secure wallets that anyone can use on any device, with any operating system, for any application or service, and with any currency. The standardization of the wallet aims to be the main tool that consumers will use to make the most of DeFi and regulatory initiatives such as Open Banking.

The group's intention is not to create wallets and credentials, but an open-source code that will serve as the foundation for the development of wallets by organizations, governments, and companies: "Wallets (created with OWF code) will seek feature parity with the best available wallets and interoperability with major cross-border projects, such as the European Union's digital identity wallet.

Once developed, the open-source code of OWF can be used by "anyone, anywhere" who wants to build or integrate with an interoperable open standard digital wallet. This can generate use cases for sectors that require digital credentials, digital signatures, digital payments, or other reliable digital interactions. Among the mentioned areas that can develop wallets from open-source code are: finance, insurance, health, education, retail, tourism, government, and gaming.

Currently, OWF is in the process of creating its operational and governance structure. But some work is already underway, such as the Governance Stack working group that operates in defining open standards from W3C, ISO, Decentralized Identity Foundation, and Trust Over IP (ToIP) Foundation for technical interoperability. Later, this group should move on to governance in interoperability, with the aim of ensuring the operation of a wallet between countries or different sectors.

The first Premier members sponsoring OWF include Accenture, Gen, Futurewei, and Visa. The general members sponsoring the foundation include American Express, Deutsche Telekom/T-Systems, esatus AG, Fynbos, Hopae, IAMX, IDnow, IndyKite, Intesi Group, Ping Identity, SmartMedia Technologies (SMT), Spruce, and Swisscom.

In just six months, the OpenWallet Foundation (OWF) has grown from three to 350 global organizations, including trillion-dollar companies, who intend to collaborate to create an open-source mechanism that "anyone can use to build interoperable, secure, and privacy-protecting digital wallets."

The hope that bringing together multiple vendors to build the mechanism will address the interoperability issues that the digital identity sector has faced for decades: "The common open-source base layer of digital wallets promises to improve interoperability between different digital wallets, ultimately avoiding lock-in to single digital wallets and serving the interests of digital wallet users and consumers," states a Linux Foundation statement.

Recently, on August 23, 2023, OWF announced the inclusion of Google, OWF reinforces its mission to drive interoperability and open-source innovation in the domain of wallets and digital payments. Additionally, OWF also welcomes its first code contribution from the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP). Already an OWF member, MOSIP is an open-source platform for implementing national-scale digital identity systems. This contribution marks the beginning of the development of critical components of an open-source software mechanism for portable and secure digital wallets.

"Six months after our launch, we are pleased to welcome Google Wallet as a member of the OpenWallet Foundation," said Daniel Goldscheider, founder and CEO of the OpenWallet Foundation. "They are global leaders in the wallet industry, and their expertise will be invaluable in promoting our common goal of working together to create a healthy wallet ecosystem. Google Wallet's participation highlights the growing recognition of the importance of open-source software for wallets. At the heart of OpenWallet are the developers and their projects, and we are proud to announce that MOSIP is contributing to two projects."

"Google has a longstanding commitment to creating open and interoperable solutions, and we apply that spirit to Google Wallet," said Jenny Cheng, Vice President and General Manager of Google Wallet. "We look forward to working closely with other OWF members to advocate for solutions that ensure the building of a privacy-focused wallet for everyone, everywhere."

MOSIP, a member since OWF's launch, will contribute code components for issuing verifiable credentials and for BLE-based credential sharing, based on the OpenID specification. These components have been developed as part of MOSIP's Inji mobile wallet suite.