One integration for every identity format: rethinking digital identity verification.

In May 2024, Regulation (EU) 2024/1183 brought the European Digital Identity framework into force and reset what “an ID” means for any business that onboards EU users. A passport scan used to be the whole job. Now the same onboarding flow has to handle a national digital identity, the chip inside an e-passport, a wallet credential on a phone, and a legally binding electronic signature, often for the same person across different sessions. The format a user shows up with is no longer your decision. This piece argues that the integration model you choose, not the individual check, is what now separates teams that keep pace from teams that fall behind.

What does digital identity verification mean when identity has no single format?

Digital identity verification is the process of confirming that a person is who they claim to be, using documents, biometrics, database checks, or cryptographic credentials, without an in-person meeting. The definition has not changed. What changed is the input. A single user can now prove identity with a physical document, a government-issued digital ID, an EU Digital Identity Wallet, an NFC chip read, or a Qualified Electronic Signature.

That shift matters because most verification systems were designed around one input and retrofitted for the rest. A flow built to read a driver’s licence does not natively accept a wallet credential. A flow built for wallets cannot fall back to a forensic document check when a user has no wallet yet. The result is a stack that handles the format it was born for and degrades on everything else. The failure mode is predictable: a user with a perfectly valid credential abandons onboarding because your system only speaks one language.

The identity formats your users will actually present

Five distinct identity formats are now in active use across the EU, and a user can present any of them depending on their country, device, and the service they are accessing. Treating these as one category is where most onboarding designs go wrong, because each carries a different capture method, trust level, and regulatory weight.

The point of the table is not that one format is better. It is that a user does not pick the format your system prefers. Coverage of all five, through the same flow, is what keeps a valid user from becoming a lost conversion.

Why eIDAS 2.0 makes multi-format support non-optional?

eIDAS 2.0 turns multi-format identity from a nice-to-have into a legal obligation with a date attached. Under Regulation (EU) 2024/1183, every EU member state must make at least one EU Digital Identity Wallet available to its citizens and residents, and specified private relying parties that require strong user authentication must accept that wallet as a means of identification. The deadlines are fixed, and they are closing.

The acceptance obligation is the part most teams underestimate. By late 2027, a regulated business cannot tell an EU user that it does not support their wallet, in the same way it cannot refuse a valid passport today. The wallet does not replace document verification. It joins it. According to Financial Action Task Force (FATF) guidance on digital identity, firms should take a risk-based approach and rely on identity systems with an appropriate level of trustworthiness at every stage of the process, which means the older formats stay in scope even as wallets arrive. You will be running physical IDs, database checks, NFC reads, and wallet credentials in parallel, not in sequence.

One integration versus many: the architecture decision

The strategic question is no longer “which check do we run?” It is “how many integrations are we willing to own?” Every format added as a separate connector is a separate contract, a separate SDK, a separate failure surface, and a separate thing to keep compliant as the rules move. Teams that treat each new format as its own project accumulate exactly the fragmentation that the regulation was meant to remove.

The cost of integrating one format at a time

Wiring up formats individually looks manageable at first, but compounds badly after that. Each connector has its own update cycle, its own edge cases, and its own owner, and the moment one of them lags a regulatory change, the whole onboarding flow inherits the gap. The engineering cost is visible in the backlog. The hidden cost is conversion: users routed to the wrong handler, sessions that cannot fall back when a credential is missing, and an audit trail stitched across systems that cannot prove the steps belonged to the same verification. When something breaks, the team spends its time finding which connector owns the problem instead of fixing it.

What a single integration layer changes?

A single integration layer flips the model. Instead of routing each format to a different system, one entry point accepts whatever the user presents and applies the right check behind it. The user shows a passport, a wallet, or a chip, and the flow adapts without a separate build for each path. For engineering, that means one API to maintain and one place to absorb a regulatory change rather than five. For compliance, it means one audit trail that holds the whole session together. The format becomes a runtime detail, not an architectural commitment, which is the only way to keep pace with a standard that is still adding formats.

How Shufti handles every identity format through one integration?

If you onboard EU users, you have already felt the pressure: the wallet deadline is fixed, your users still arrive with passports and national IDs, and supporting both without doubling your integration load is the real problem. Most verification systems were built around a single input and bolt the rest on, which is why coverage degrades the moment a user shows up with something the flow was not designed for.

Shufti accepts the full range through one integration: physical IDs, national digital IDs, EUDI Wallets, NFC chip verification, and Qualified Electronic Signatures under eIDAS 2.0, all via a single API. The same connection that runs a forensic document check also accepts a citizen’s wallet credential, with proprietary OCR trained natively on 10,000+ document types across 220+ countries for the formats that are not going anywhere. One platform, fully owned technology, global coverage with real local depth.

See how one integration handles every identity format your EU users present, book a 20-minute demo.