Business Wallets

Overview

A business wallet is software that allows an organization to receive, store, manage, and present verifiable credentials. Just as a citizen’s digital identity wallet holds a driver’s licence or passport, a business wallet holds organizational credentials — business registrations, trade documents, certifications, and authorizations.

UNVTD is designed to be compatible with business wallets but not dependent on them. This is a deliberate architectural choice driven by the multi-party reality of international trade.

Why No Wallet Dependency

A single commercial invoice may be used by the exporter, importer, banks, insurers, customs authorities, chambers of commerce, brokers, and freight forwarders across two or more countries. Requiring all of these parties to operate a business wallet before they can participate in digital trade would recreate the same adoption barrier that has limited hub-and-pipe models to 10% uptake.

UNVTD credentials can be:

• Issued from a business wallet — or from any system that can produce a signed verifiable credential.
• Received and verified within a business wallet — or by any system that can validate a cryptographic signature.
• Exchanged via wallet-to-wallet protocols — or via email, API, file transfer, QR code, or any other channel.

This means a party with a sophisticated business wallet and a party with a simple PDF viewer can both use the same document. Neither blocks the other from participating.

The Issuer-Holder-Verifier Model

Business wallets follow the W3C trust triangle:

1. Issuer (e.g., a business registry or an exporter’s accounting system) creates and signs a verifiable credential.
2. Holder (the organization’s wallet) stores the credential and can present it on demand.
3. Verifier (a customs authority, bank, or trading partner) checks the credential’s authenticity and the issuer’s identity.

UNVTD documents fit naturally into this model. A commercial invoice issued as a verifiable credential can be stored in the exporter’s wallet and presented to any verifier. But the same credential works identically when sent as a file attachment — the wallet is a convenience, not a requirement.

Major Business Wallet Initiatives

Several initiatives are building the infrastructure for organizational wallets. UNVTD aims to be compatible with these ecosystems through adherence to W3C Verifiable Credentials and standard exchange protocols.

EU Business Wallet (EUBW)

The European Commission proposed a regulation for European Business Wallets in November 2025, distinct from the citizen-focused EUDI Wallet. The EUBW is designed as a cloud-based, web-accessible wallet for legal persons — companies, sole traders, and public bodies — enabling them to identify themselves, exchange verified documents, and digitally sign and seal across EU borders with full legal effect.

• Credential formats: SD-JWT VC (for remote interactions) and mdoc (for proximity scenarios)
• Exchange protocols: OpenID for Verifiable Credentials (OID4VCI for issuance, OID4VP for presentation)
• Timeline: Draft regulation in legislative process; field tests from 2026; EU-wide operational readiness targeted for 2028–2029
• Trade relevance: B2B/B2G identity, cross-border document exchange, KYC/AML automation

Singapore TradeTrust

Singapore’s TradeTrust framework, managed by IMDA, is one of the most advanced trade-document digitalization initiatives globally. Operational since 2021 and covering 19+ countries, it is built on W3C Verifiable Credentials and supports both verifiable documents (e.g., certificates of origin) and transferable documents (e.g., electronic bills of lading) compliant with the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR).

Other Initiatives

• Australia–Japan Cross-Border Interoperability — the first Asia-Pacific working group on cross-border verifiable credential exchange between organizational wallets.
• Pan-Canadian Trust Framework (PCTF) — Canada’s national standard (CAN/DGSI 103-0:2025) covering digital credentials, wallets, and trust frameworks for both citizens and organizations.
• OpenWallet Foundation — a Linux Foundation project providing cross-ecosystem interoperability infrastructure, with implementations of OID4VC protocols and growing membership including Mastercard and Huawei.

UNVTD Compatibility Approach

UNVTD ensures compatibility with business wallet ecosystems by:

• Using W3C Verifiable Credentials as the credential format — the foundational standard that all major wallet initiatives build upon.
• Keeping credentials self-contained — inline schemas, no external dependencies to resolve, so any wallet or non-wallet system can process them.
• Not prescribing exchange protocols — documents can be exchanged via OID4VC wallet protocols, REST APIs, or any other transport. The credential itself is transport-agnostic.
• Supporting selective disclosure use cases — the structured JSON data model allows wallet systems to implement selective disclosure where their credential format supports it (e.g., SD-JWT VC), without requiring changes to the UNVTD schema.

This approach means that as business wallet adoption grows, UNVTD documents will work seamlessly within wallet ecosystems. But the millions of trade participants who are years away from adopting a wallet are not excluded — they can use the same documents today.