By Miguel Santos Luparelli Mathieu, Product Innovation Director
Digital identity has become the backbone of trust in the digital economy. By 2026, the challenge is no longer limited to verifying users; it is about orchestrating entire trust ecosystems, where identity, payments, compliance and security operate as a single, integrated framework.
In this first part of the 2026 Radar, we analyse the structural trends that are laying the foundations for the future of digital identity.
Identity Wallets: The Core of Digital Trust
Digital Identity Wallets will shape the future of digital trust, data provenance and data governance. In 2026, multiple wallet models will coexist, each with different levels of adoption, maturity and competitive positioning.
Government-led wallets will retain sovereignty over citizens’ identities, while solutions such as Apple Wallet or Google Wallet will play a significant role in certain markets (such as the United States, the United Kingdom or Japan), without truly competing with governmental models in terms of sovereignty.
Geopolitics will be a decisive factor: it will accelerate the deployment of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), foster super-app models and define the path towards sovereign AI. At the same time, industry-specific wallets will emerge to address the needs of sectors with highly specialised requirements—particularly in scenarios such as the cross-border exchange of sensitive data (for example, biometrics).
In these contexts, wallets will need to incorporate advanced decentralised consent management capabilities, enabling compliance with multiple regulatory frameworks simultaneously.
Key impact
- Identity-First authentication
- Consortium-based decentralised data models
- Wallets with decentralised consent management
- Real-time device intelligence sharing
- Know Your Wallet (KYW)
- Prevention of identity theft and synthetic identities
Pre-emptive Cybersecurity: End-to-End Protection
The cybersecurity landscape is expanding rapidly due to the adoption of Generative AI across multiple layers of IT infrastructure. In this context, pre-emptive cybersecurity is no longer a competitive advantage—it is becoming a baseline requirement.
The use of predictive analytics to continuously monitor an organisation’s attack surface, combined with adaptive and agile capabilities, is redefining how identity verification and user authentication systems are designed today.
These forces are transforming financial crime prevention towards 360° end-to-end models that cover the entire digital trust lifecycle:
Session enrolment and authentication
Account classification
Transaction monitoring
Fraud Detection and AML are no longer operating in silos; instead, they are converging into orchestrated platforms that eliminate vulnerabilities and bridge the gap between fraud and compliance teams.
Key impact
- Robust KYC and pKYC
- Strong Customer Authentication with verifiable credentials
- Pre-processing of pre-fraud signals
- Account classification and transaction monitoring
Payment Infrastructure
Two key innovations stand out in the evolution of payment rails:
The regulation of stablecoins by certain governments (such as the GENIUS Act in the United States), introducing KYC, AML and data-sharing requirements. This takes place in a broader context of decentralisation, instant payments and the need for governments to maintain regulatory momentum over alternative—or innovative—payment infrastructures with mass adoption potential.
Google’s Agent Payment Protocol (A2P), designed to identify and authenticate agents that make payment decisions on behalf of humans. This is an industry-led initiative aimed at accelerating technology adoption and paving the way for digital trust, traceability and agency in transactions driven by Agentic AI.
Key impact
- KYC and pKYC for wallet-based payments
- SCA with verifiable credentials
- Know Your Wallet (wallet classification)
- Transaction monitoring across decentralised payment rails
The trends shaping 2026 share a common denominator: identity is evolving from a control point into the core of digital architecture.
This new landscape requires moving away from fragmented solutions and embracing Identity-First strategies capable of integrating authentication, KYC, AML and transaction monitoring into a unified vision. Organisations that understand this convergence will not only meet regulatory requirements, but also build sustainable digital trust in an increasingly complex and distributed environment.