OpenWallet Foundation aims to open-source digital wallets
The Linux Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium, has announced the intention to form the OpenWallet Foundation (OWF), a new collaborative effort to develop open source software to support interoperability for a wide range of wallet use cases. The mission of the OWF, says the organization, is to develop a secure, multi-purpose open source engine anyone can use to build interoperable wallets.
The OWF aims to set best practices for digital wallet technology through collaboration on open source code for use as a starting point for anyone who strives to build interoperable, secure, and privacy-protecting wallets. The OWF does not intend to publish a wallet itself, nor offer credentials or create any new standards.
Instead, the community will focus on building an open source software engine that other organizations and companies can leverage to develop their own digital wallets. The wallets will support a wide variety of use cases from identity to payments to digital keys and aim to achieve feature parity with the best available wallets.
“We are convinced that digital wallets will play a critical role for digital societies,” says Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemllin. “Open software is the key to interoperability and security. We are delighted to host the OpenWallet Foundation and excited for its potential.”
The initiative already benefits from strong support including leading companies across technology, public sector, and industry vertical segments, and standardization organizations.
“Verifiable credentials are becoming an essential digital empowerment tool for billions of people and small entities,” says Pramod Varma, Chief Architect Aadhaar & India Stack. “India has been at the forefront of it and is going all out to convert all physical certificates into digitally verifiable credentials via the very successful Digilocker system. I am very excited about the OWF effort to create an interoperable and open source credential wallet engine to supercharge the credentialing infrastructure globally.”
David Treat, Global Metaverse Continuum Business Group & Blockchain lead, Accenture adds, “Universal digital wallet infrastructure will create the ability to carry tokenized identity, money, and objects from place to place in the digital world. Massive business model change is coming, and the winning digital business will be the one that earns trust to directly access the real data in our wallets to create much better digital experiences. We are excited to be part of the launch and development of an open-source basis for digital wallet infrastructure to help ensure consistency, interoperability, and portability with privacy, security, and inclusiveness at the core by design.”
The OpenWallet Foundation community is currently working on its governance and structure with the goal of launching later in 2022.
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :
