Global Digital Trust Awards
What an incredible first edition of the Global Digital Trust Awards! After receiving so many submissions from around the world and tremendous community engagement, the 2026 winners were announced during Global Digital Collaboration in Geneva.
The 2026 Winners
SSItizens
Giving people control of their identity for greater inclusion and opportunity
Mobile Driving Licence
A global collaboration enabling trusted and interoperable digital driving licences
Real Estate Purchasing
Simpler, faster and more trusted real estate transactions through verifiable credentials
Urban Company
Building trust and safer services through verifiable identities
Aadhaar App
The world’s largest government wallet, empowering people with digital credentials
Highlights from Geneva
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About the Global Digital Trust Awards
The Global Digital Trust Awards are a global community initiative to discover, share and recognize real-world implementations of verifiable credentials and digital wallet technologies. The Awards aim to accelerate real-world adoption and global interoperability.
The 2026 edition brought together 94 published use cases from 29 countries, involving 210+ organizations, with 25 finalists selected across five award categories. The finalists were evaluated through a 50/50 combination of an international jury representing digital trust associations from around the world and community voting, with 3,000+ votes cast.
All Award submissions remain available in the FIDES Ecosystem Explorer and can continue to be updated and enriched, creating a living discovery platform for real-world digital trust solutions around the world.
From 94 published use cases from around the world, 24 finalists were selected across five award categories. Each finalist represents a strong example of digital trust being put into practice — from global standards and public infrastructure to financial services, social impact and large-scale consumer adoption.
Explore the 2026 winners and finalists below, presented in their final ranking within each award category.
Collaboration Award
1. 🏆 Mobile Driving Licence (mDL) based on ISO/IEC 18013-5 — Winner 2026
An outstanding example of long-term global collaboration, bringing governments, industry and standards communities together around an interoperable standard that is now enabling real-world adoption of mobile driving licences around the world.
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2. End-to-End Digital Business Workflows: Transforming KYB-KYC-KYS via EU Business Wallet
A strong public-private collaboration connecting businesses, banks, registries and authorities around interoperable digital business workflows, demonstrating the significant potential of the emerging EU Business Wallet ecosystem.
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3. From Mine Permit to Digital Product Passport: Building an Open Digital Trust Ecosystem for Responsible Critical Minerals
A remarkable public-private collaboration applying open standards and verifiable data across a complex critical-minerals supply chain, with strong potential to support transparency, traceability and sustainability at global scale.
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3. CREDEBL: An Open-Source Digital Trust Infrastructure Enabling Trusted Digital Ecosystems
A strong international open-source Digital Public Good supporting real-world trust infrastructure, including Bhutan NDI, which already serves 525,000+ users, as well as digital travel initiatives.
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5. Cross-Border Micro-Credentials: The EU.ACE Chain (EU–CH)
A concrete example of cross-border educational credential interoperability between Switzerland and the EU, combining open standards, institutional trust and wallet choice in a model with potential for broader reuse.
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Social Impact Award
1. 🏆 SSITIZENS — Verifiable social aid: how municipalities, merchants and citizens exchange trust with Wallets — Winner 2026
A compelling example of digital credentials creating direct social value. The pilot achieved a 98% aid redemption rate while reducing administrative workload by 90%, benefiting citizens, municipalities and local merchants.
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2. Digitally Empowered with California’s Instant Identity Card (IIC)
A highly promising approach to making trusted digital identity immediately available to citizens, combining strong public-sector foundations with the potential to unlock easier access to a wide range of services.
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3. Arattai: Verified Social Media Profiles
A compelling application of reusable Aadhaar credentials to social media. Arattai already serves 8 million users, with around 12,000 identity verifications per month, demonstrating a practical approach to strengthening authenticity and trust online. Its submission identifies the platform as an 8-million-user service.
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4. Verifiable Work-Completion Credentials for Migrant Construction Workers
A powerful worker-centric use case enabling migrant construction workers to build portable, verifiable records of completed work and experience, with significant potential to improve mobility, recognition and access to future opportunities.
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5. Instant, Paperless Rural Credit Using Verifiable Credentials
A strong financial-inclusion use case that enabled Brazil’s first real rural credit transaction using verifiable credentials, replacing paper-based land and environmental documentation with instantly verifiable digital proofs.
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Adoption Award
1. 🏆 Urban Company: Service Professional and Customer Identity Verification — Winner 2026
An impressive production deployment bringing reusable Aadhaar credentials into a major consumer-services platform with 8.4 million users, already supporting around 60,000 identity verification transactions per month and strengthening trust between professionals and customers. The submission describes Urban Company as serving 8.4 million users.
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2. USA Secure Domestic Travel: TSA Mobile Driver’s License at Airport Checkpoints
One of the world’s largest real-world mDL deployments: 45,800 transactions across 271 airports in May 2026, with credentials from 21 issuing jurisdictions supported across 13 wallet applications. Verification takes around 6.8 seconds compared with roughly 20 seconds for a physical ID.
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2. Honduras: Billetera Electronica Nacional (BIEN) — 4 government authorities issuing into one citizen-controlled wallet
An impressive national rollout bringing four government authorities into one citizen-controlled wallet, with around 200,000 credentials issued in the first month alone, reaching Hondurans both at home and abroad.
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4. Faydapass
A significant Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) initiative for Ethiopia, creating a national foundation for issuing, holding and verifying reusable digital credentials. FaydaPass builds on Ethiopia’s national Fayda identity and enables multiple sector institutions to issue credentials on top of that common trust foundation.
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5. Neoflow Digital Energy Passport for Cross-Border Crude Oil Clearance
An ambitious cross-border trade implementation applying verifiable credentials to complex energy supply chains, showing how reusable trusted data can streamline regulatory processes and reduce friction between multiple organizations and jurisdictions.
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Best Wallet Award
1. 🏆 Aadhaar App — Winner 2026
With 52 million+ downloads, the Aadhaar App demonstrates digital credentials at exceptional population scale, creating a reusable government identity wallet that is already being integrated into a growing range of everyday public and private-sector services.
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2. SWIYU Wallet
A strong national wallet initiative built around open standards and public trust infrastructure, already supporting multiple real-world use cases and providing a foundation for a broader interoperable digital credential ecosystem.
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3. France Identité
A mature government-backed identity wallet combining high-assurance identity with practical digital services and a growing ecosystem, demonstrating how national digital identity can become part of citizens’ everyday interactions.
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3. SIROS ID
A technically distinctive open web wallet with strong standards support and very low installation friction, demonstrating an alternative approach to wallet deployment with significant potential for interoperable credential ecosystems.
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Business Value Award
1. 🏆 From Repeated Verification to Reusable Trust: Re-imagining the Real Estate Purchasing Journey — Winner 2026
A compelling demonstration of reusable trust in a complex, high-value transaction, enabling a verified identity credential to be reused across multiple participants in the real-estate journey instead of repeatedly completing identity verification.
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2. inGo — Digital, Verifiable and Secure Subcontractor Management Including Physical Access
A strong production use case connecting digital credentials directly to subcontractor compliance and physical access, replacing paper documents and spreadsheets with reusable, instantly verifiable credentials across workers, subcontractors and construction sites. Visit use case →
3. Trusted eReceipts for B2B Payments: issuing verifiable receipts to a European Business Wallet after EUDI-based SCA
An innovative application connecting payments, verifiable receipts and business wallets, showing how trusted transaction evidence could reduce reconciliation friction and enable more automated accounting, VAT and business processes.
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4. Hala Mobility: Verified Rider Onboarding
A clear production business case for reusing Aadhaar credentials in electric-scooter rider onboarding, already supporting around 3,700 identity verifications per month while eliminating physical Aadhaar copies and manual document verification. The underlying submission confirms the deployment is live in production.
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5. DIFO — Digital Invoice Financing Origination for SMEs (Serbia & Romania pilot)
A highly tangible SME-finance pilot covering 58 invoices from 24 SMEs across Serbia and Romania, generating 200+ verifiable proofs and bringing verification costs to below $2 per invoice.
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The first edition of the Global Digital Trust Awards awarded five categories:
- Collaboration Award 2026
Award for the use case that best demonstrates collaboration across organizations, sectors, regions, or ecosystems. Guidelines for voting include:- Multi-stakeholder collaboration
- Cross-border or cross-ecosystem interoperability
- Ecosystem growth and participation
- Open standards and reusability
- Knowledge sharing and community engagement
- Contribution to the broader digital trust ecosystem
- Social Impact Award 2026
Award for the use case that demonstrates the greatest positive societal impact through the use of digital wallets, verifiable credentials, and trusted digital infrastructure. Guidelines for voting include:- Societal impact
- Inclusion and accessibility
- Privacy and user empowermen
- Contribution to sustainability or public good
- Measurable benefits for citizens, communities, or organizations
- Potential for global adoption and replication
- Adoption Award 2026
Award for the use case that demonstrates the strongest real-world adoption and operational use. Guidelines for voting include:- Real-world deployment and usage
- Number and diversity of participant
- Ecosystem adoption and engagemen
- Scalability and sustainability
- Business or operational value
- Regulatory readiness and compliance
- Best Wallet Award 2026
Award for the wallet solution that best demonstrates excellence in usability, interoperability, trust, and ecosystem support. Guidelines for voting include:- User experience and accessibility
- Interoperability and standards support
- Security and privacy
- Ecosystem integration
- Real-world adoption
- Innovation and future readiness
- Business Value Award 2026
Award for the use case that best demonstrates measurable business value using digital wallets and verifiable credentials.. Guidelines for voting include:- Friction removal and efficiency
- Revenue growth
- Better experience for customers, partners, employees
- Risk reduction and increased trust
- Scalability and long-term business sustainability
- Systematic fraud response
