The Identity Gap: One Size Fits None. Why the EUDI Wallet Won’t Please Everyone…

How Consumers Want to Open a Bank Account Today. 

When consumers were asked how they would prefer to verify their identity when opening a bank account, the responses were far from consistent: 

• 24% prefer in-person verification at a branch 

• 14% prefer a digital identity wallet 

• 13% prefer NFC chip scanning 

• 11% prefer photo upload and selfie verification 

• 10% prefer a video call with a human agent 

• 16% would not open a bank account online at all 

Read those numbers again.  

The most popular onboarding method is still the physical branch. Interestingly, digital identity wallets are already the second most popular option, despite 51% of respondents having never heard of the EUDI Wallet, showing that consumers are interested in the concept before the product has even launched. Equally important is that 16% of consumers would not complete the process online under any circumstances. This should act as a stark warning that the market is not ready to abandon existing identity verification methods.

Age Is [Not] Just a Number.

Among Gen Z consumers (18–29), digital-first preferences dominate, but the picture is more nuanced than might be expected. Although they’re most likely to prefer wallet-based and NFC-based onboarding, and the least likely to want a branch visit, they’re also the most likely to abandon a transaction when verification gets in the way, with a 56% abandonment rate that reflects impatience with friction, not loyalty to any single method. 

Among Boomers (62–80), the picture is almost inverted with branch preference highest and online lowest. A quarter of Boomers say they would not open a bank account online at all, compared to 16% across the full sample. Boomer awareness of the EUDI Wallet is also the lowest of any age group, at just 30%. 

While the need to offer multiple identity verification methods will remain important for the foreseeable future, it’s also necessary to ensure any Wallet-onboarding strategy factors in multiple demographic differences. For example, while a strategy that is optimised for Gen Z may lead to increased adoption among that group, it may result in losing a significant portion of its older customer base. Likewise, a bank that maintains and/ or promotes just branch-only or document-upload-only verification will retain its Boomer customers and haemorrhage the younger ones who expect something faster and less intrusive.  

Neither is really viable on a long-term basis. As such, the only successful long-term identity verification strategy is one that supports all of them, intelligently, from a single integration layer, such as the IDnow Trust Platform. 

Why the Wallet Is Already the 2nd Most Popular Method Even Among Those Who’ve Never Heard of It.

The finding that 14% of consumers would choose a digital identity wallet as their preferred onboarding method despite 51% having never heard of the EUDI Wallet deserves particular attention. 

It tells you that the concept already resonates with them now before rollout in December 2026. They understand the value proposition of verifying once, presenting wherever needed, and only sharing what is required.  

For financial services, this should act as both an opportunity and a warning.   

The opportunity is that when the EUDI Wallet launches and awareness begins to grow, the preference for wallet-based onboarding will almost certainly increase alongside it. The 14% who already prefer it as the top method of identity verification will likely be joined by a significant portion of the 51% who have never heard of it.  

Equally as important to heed is the warning: that growth in wallet preference will not eliminate the other methods. In-person verification will still be the first choice for a substantial segment of a financial service’s customer base. Video calls will still be preferred by a meaningful minority. NFC chip scanning will grow — particularly among Gen Z — but will not become universal.  

As such, the institutions that will survive in the future are not those that bet on a single method. They are those that offer an orchestration layer that routes each customer to the right verification method for them, at the assurance level the transaction requires, without any break in the journey.

What the Security–Friction Paradox Means for Onboarding Design.

There’s a stat from the EUDI Wallet Consumer Survey that potentially complicates the standard digital transformation narrative: 47% of consumers said they would prefer more identity checks, if it meant improved security. Nearly half of your potential customers are telling you they would rather wait longer and feel more secure than move faster and feel exposed. And that preference is broadly distributed across age groups. 

The implication for onboarding design suggests that the goal is not necessarily to minimise the number of verification steps but to make each step feel proportionate, purposeful, and secure. Friction is verification that feels arbitrary, repetitive, or excessive. Assurance is verification that feels necessary, transparent, and trustworthy. The former drives abandonment. The latter builds the kind of customer relationship that survives the EUDI Wallet transition and everything that follows.

How to Please Everyone, All the Time.

The IDnow Trust Platform can seamlessly connect to every EU member state’s EUDI Wallet through just one API and handles the complexity of integration, compliance, and evolving standards so you can focus on delivering a trustworthy experience for every customer. In doing so, it allows financial services to: 

• Accept EUDI Wallet credentials: verifying PID and attestations cryptographically, in real time, across all EU member states 

• Support eID and NFC chip scanning: for the significant proportion of consumers who prefer chip-based verification, and for high-assurance scenarios where wallet credentials alone may not be sufficient 

• Deliver document verification and biometric matching for customers not yet wallet-ready, for cross-border scenarios where wallet interoperability is still maturing, and for the fallback cases that every integration will encounter 

• Offer video-assisted onboarding: for the 10% who prefer human-assisted verification, for high-value transactions that warrant additional assurance, and for customer segments where digital-only onboarding is not appropriate 

• Route intelligently between methods: based on the customer’s device, location, the transaction’s assurance requirements, and the customer’s own preferences, without requiring the customer to understand the underlying logic 

IDnow is independently certified to the highest identity assurance levels under eIDAS 2.0, actively participating in national pilots across France, Germany, and at European Commission level, and has the regulatory expertise to keep your integration current as standards evolve between now and December 2027 and beyond.

The Competitive Case for Getting This Right Now.

The institutions that move earliest to build full-spectrum onboarding will be able to offer a materially better customer experience than those that treat the EUDI Wallet as a checkbox and leave everything else unchanged. They will also have a data advantage. Every onboarding interaction that passes through an orchestrated, intelligent verification layer generates signals — about customer preferences, about where friction occurs, about which methods convert and which do not.  

“Trust is earned through transparency and demonstrated security. The fact that banks lead governments in consumer trust reflects decades of investment in secure, reliable financial infrastructure. The EUDI Wallet ecosystem needs to build on that foundation, not compete with it.” Uwe Stelzig, Managing Director DACH, IDnow 

One size fits none. The banks that build for every customer — not just the digital-first ones — will be the ones that consumers trust with their identity when the EUDI Wallet arrives. And trust, as the data consistently shows, is the only thing that drives adoption at scale. 

You’ve reached the end of The Identity Gap series. If you’ve found this useful, the full report goes further — with data broken down by market, age group, and awareness level across all seven chapters. Download it now, or revisit the series from the beginning: 

The Identity Gap: Friction Vs Conversion. What the EUDI Wallet Will and Won’t Fix Tomorrow.

The Identity Gap: Privacy vs Compliance. Why Selective Disclosure Is the EUDI Wallet’s Most Powerful Feature.

Frequently Asked Questions About EUDI Wallet Integration.

By

Jody Houton
Senior PR & Content Manager at IDnow
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