FIDO Alliance Moves to Accelerate Digital Credentials Adoption at Scale

Alliance unveils public key working documents for digital wallets and launches industry engagement forum at the annual Authenticate conference

CARLSBAD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The FIDO Alliance today announced it will make key working documents from its digital wallet certification work publicly available. It also launched an External Advisory Forum that gives issuers, governments and regulators greater visibility and insights into its digital credentials work. Announced at Authenticate 2026, they are the next steps in FIDO’s work to build the trust infrastructure needed for a post-password world.

The FIDO Alliance is working to enable an ecosystem where people and their agents access and interact with services – online and in person – by relying on verifiable human identity. This acts as a cryptographic root of trust that closes the phishable gaps that remain at account onboarding and recovery. It is also a prerequisite for agentic commerce, ensuring each transaction is rooted in verified human approval, traceable to the person who granted it, and within the limits they set.

Today’s announcements help ensure this next step in the evolution of the internet is open, trusted and interoperable. These outputs come from FIDO technical working groups and will be made available publicly in the coming weeks. For the latest updates please visit here.

• Reference Architecture for Digital Wallets. For digital credentials to be trusted at scale, the wallets that hold and present them need a common, verifiable baseline. The Credential Manager Reference Architecture (CMRA) defines how credential managers (commonly referred to as digital wallets) are expected to implement functional, security, and interoperability requirements. It sets a strong, standards-based, global baseline across use cases including national digital ID, payments, workforce and travel credentials, with profiles to be built on top as needed. The CMRA forms the foundation for FIDO’s Credential Manager Certification Program.
• Framework for Verifier Identification. Credential managers excel at proving who the user is, but lack scalable mechanisms to validate the identity of the verifier requesting the data. They are also responsible for displaying meaningful, accurate information and trust signals about the verifier to users during a credential request. The Verifier ID framework describes how a credential manager receives structured and verified information about the website or service asking for a person's information, allowing users to review and approve credential sharing through a clear, accurate interface.
• External Advisory Forum for Digital Credentials. A non-binding channel for key stakeholders in the digital credentials ecosystem, like issuers, governments, regulators, and industry associations, to engage with the Alliance's digital credentials work, including the certification program and other emerging initiatives. More information on the forum, including a registration link, can be found at https://fidoalliance.org/fido-alliance-digital-credentials/#forum.

“The vast potential of digital credentials will only be realized if people, organizations and governments can trust them wherever they’re used,” said Andrew Shikiar, Executive Director & CEO of the FIDO Alliance. “That takes open standards, certification the market can rely on, and alignment from every side of the ecosystem. Today’s announcements put all three in motion. We’re proud that the industry has come together through the FIDO Alliance to make this vision a reality.”

About the FIDO Alliance
The FIDO Alliance (www.fidoalliance.org) enables identity technologies that put trust and simplicity at the center of interactions among people, services, and devices. The Alliance provides a member-driven forum that publishes open technical specifications, certifies secure and interoperable products, and operates global market enablement programs.