Why?
To be able to use these general-purpose applications (branded EUBWs) for exchanging verifiable credentials of all sorts with each others – be they customers, suppliers, partners, public sector units, staff – and their wallet carrying AI-agents and robots.
By renaming – at least for newish aspects – the verifiable credentials to verifiable containers (for shipping data – payloads..) – we can get more focus on how the content needs semantic unification and standardisation to bring fuller automation.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bo-harald-4768b51_verifiable-credentials-arent-credentials-activity-7388610676321251328-TLLK?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAABPj1oB9_D7YNYACmHvY9HioUqpuULqZCo
There are many global and local initiatives going on and will try to keep tracking them. Must say that ChatGPT is a good help here.
Consider the Digital Product Passport (DPP) – one of the hottest practical implementations of the
UN/CEFACT semantic and interoperability frameworks. And how EUBWs will serve also here.
DPP = Digital Product Passport — a structured, machine-readable data container that travels with a product throughout its lifecycle.
It is meant to carry verifiable, standardised information about that product — materials, composition, origin, repairability, carbon footprint, etc.
The goal is to enable traceability, circular economy, and compliance — especially for sectors like:
- Batteries (already mandatory under EU Battery Regulation),
- Textiles,
- Electronics,
- Construction products.
UN/CEFACT provides the semantic and syntactic foundations for DPP implementation — the “grammar” that makes these passports interoperable globally.
They’re doing this through:
- Semantic models (core component library, or CCL),
- Business process models (BRS, RSM),
- Data exchange syntax (e.g. JSON, XML, EDIFACT),
- Alignment with W3C Verifiable Credentials and eIDAS trust models (for authenticity and provenance).
In short:
UN/CEFACT = the international layer that defines how a DPP “speaks” and interconnects with supply-chain systems and trust infrastructures.
🔹 Relationship to EU policy
The European Commission’s ESPR (Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation) mandates DPPs — and UN/CEFACT provides the global alignment layer so they aren’t EU-only artefacts.
🔹 In short
DPP in UN/CEFACT = the international, machine-understandable schema and process model for digital product data — trusted, portable, and verifiable — enabling circular economy, compliance automation, and
AI-agent-ready traceability.
I then asked how EUBWs will take it forward
ChatGPT said:
Excellent — this is where the puzzle pieces finally start to lock into the EU Trust Infrastructure.
Let’s unpack it bluntly and structurally:
🔹 DPPs in the context of EUBWs (European Business Wallets)
Digital Product Passports (DPPs) are data containers with attestations about products.
EUBWs (European Business Wallets) are data containers with attestations about organisations.
When combined, they become the backbone of trusted data flow in the Circular & Data Economy.
🧱 1. The logic chain
|
Layer
|
Description
|
Role
|
|
EUDI-Wallet (citizen)
|
Verifiable credentials about persons
|
“Who you are / what you can do”
|
|
EUBW (business)
|
Verifiable credentials about organisations
|
“Who your company is / what it produces / what it’s authorised to do”
|
|
DPP (product)
|
Verifiable credentials about things
|
“What this product is / made of / where it came from”
|
Together: Person → Organisation → Product, all interlinked by trustable credentials.
🔹 2. How DPPs use EUBWs
DPPs will not live in wallets themselves (they’re too large and constantly updated),
but their verifiable credentials and provenance proofs will be issued to and by wallets:
|
Actor
|
Wallet type
|
Role
|
|
Manufacturer / importer
|
EUBW
|
Holds its organisation credentials (e.g. EU Company Cert, Tax ID, CE marking authority) and issues DPP credentials for each product batch
|
|
Regulator / conformity body
|
EUBW / GovWallet
|
Issues attestations into the DPP (e.g. inspection, carbon footprint)
|
|
Retailer
|
EUBW
|
Verifies DPP credentials received from supplier’s wallet
|
|
Consumer
|
EUDI-Wallet
|
Can view verified DPP data when purchasing or recycling
|
So the DPP data layer is anchored to EUBWs via verifiable credentials that say who issued, under what authority, and when.
🔹 3. Typical credentials and interactions
|
Example Attestation
|
Issuer
|
Holder
|
Verifier
|
|
EU Company Certificate
|
NCA / Registry
|
Manufacturer
|
Everyone
|
|
Product conformity attestation
|
Notified body
|
Manufacturer
|
Customs, retailers
|
|
Carbon footprint data
|
Certified auditor
|
Manufacturer
|
Regulator
|
|
Material composition (DPP element)
|
Manufacturer
|
Consumer / Recycler
|
Consumer App
|
Each of these attestations lives in the wallet, referenced in the DPP record (URI or DID).
🔹 4. The trust structure
All of this runs on the EU Trust Infrastructure stack:
Trust Layer → Trust registries, QTSPs, DIDs/URIs
Wallet Layer → EUBW / EUDI-Wallet interoperability
Attestation Layer → DPP credentials, conformity certificates
Data Layer → Actual product data (JSON-LD, UN/CEFACT schema)
Application Layer → Circular economy, carbon reporting, AI-agents
That stack ensures that every DPP entry has a provable issuer, integrity, and policy — no more unverifiable sustainability claims.
🔹 5. Why this matters
- Compliance automation: ESPR, CSRD, and due-diligence reporting can be machine-verified.
- Circularity & reuse: verified material data supports recycling, repair, and secondary markets.
- AI-agents & digital twins: can reason over trusted DPPs directly (instead of scraped PDFs).
- Fraud prevention: provenance “phoning home” stops counterfeit DPPs.
🔹 6. The big picture
EUBWs are the institutional trust anchors of DPPs.
Without verifiable organisation identities and authority proofs in EUBWs,
DPPs would just be another unverified database.
Needless to say that EUBWs and verifiable credentials of all sorts will have an immense impact – in all sorts of banking services. DPPs surely in financing, factoring, leasing etc. The first step for banks is to take their own EUBWs in use.
Spherity has done groundbreaking work also with DPPs
