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e-ID Systems Overview and Comparison¶

Last modified: 2026-10-27

Description¶

An overview of national and cross-border electronic identity systems, focusing on their technical stack and privacy properties. Switzerland, the EU and Austria have their own pages (swiyu, EUDI-ARF, ID-Austria); this page compares them and lists other systems, based on the eid-privacy WP1 survey and the taxonomy (GHE25-Taxonomy).

Switzerland, EU, Austria¶

System	Model	Credential format	Signatures	Protocols	Unlinkability	Revocation
swiyu (CH)	Wallet, state trust infrastructure	SD-JWT VC	ECDSA P-256	OpenID4VCI / VP	Batch issuance of single-use credentials	Token Status List, split into several lists
EUDI-ARF (EU)	Wallet per member state	ISO mdoc, SD-JWT VC	ECDSA	OpenID4VCI / VP, ISO 18013-5	Batch issuance of one-time credentials	—
ID-Austria (AT)	Central authentication service	— (data sent by state registry)	—	OpenID Connect, SAML2 / PVP2	Sector-specific identifiers (bPK); the state sees every login	—
AnonCreds v2 (below)	Credential system	W3C VC DM 2.0	BBS, PS	—	Zero-knowledge presentations	ALLOSAUR accumulators

Moving to anonymous credentials changes different parts of these systems depending on the approach (BL26-SoK-AnonCreds): BBS-style credentials need changes at issuers, holders and verifiers; general-purpose ZKPs over the existing ECDSA credentials (Longfellow, Crescent, the eid-privacy Spartan backend) leave the issuer infrastructure (mostly) unchanged and need changes at holders and verifiers only. See Anonymous Credentials.

AnonCreds v2¶

A credential system rather than a national e-ID: W3C VC DM 2.0 credentials with pluggable signatures (BBS, PS; CL and lattice-based considered), AnonCreds v1 concepts (schemas, credential definitions, presentation requests), and ALLOSAUR accumulators for revocation (JLM22-ALLOSAUR). Code: anoncreds-anoncreds-v2-rs. See Unlinkable-Anonymous-Credentials.

India: Aadhaar¶

A very centralised national identity platform with biometric enrolment, exposed through the IndiaStack APIs. Few technical details on privacy mechanisms are publicly available; the WP1 survey relied on a Privacy International case study.

MOSIP¶

The Modular Open-Source Identity Platform gives countries open-source building blocks for national ID systems. It follows biometric standards (ISO/IEC 19794, CBEFF), OAuth 2.0 / OpenID Connect, and defines Claim 169, a CBOR Web Token claim registered at IANA for embedding demographic and biometric data (e.g. a low-resolution face image) in a signed QR code for offline verification.

Other systems (brief)¶

System	Notes from the WP1 survey
Estonia e-ID	Smart-card / mobile eID with the X-Road data-exchange layer; citizens can see who accessed their data. Few details on credential formats and privacy found.
BankID (Sweden)	Run by banks on their security infrastructure; "centralised trust" privacy.
GOV.UK One Login	OpenID Connect-compliant login service for government services.
MitID (Denmark)	Successor of NemID; two-factor authentication, separation of personal and transaction data.
SingPass (Singapore)	Consent-based data sharing via the MyInfo service.
My Number (Japan)	12-digit unique identifier with legal limits on data collection and sharing between agencies.
UAE Pass	Biometric verification and consent for data access by government entities.
Belgium eID	Card-based eID with a hierarchical certificate structure.

Several of these rely primarily on law rather than cryptography to protect data held by private actors, which the taxonomy identifies as vulnerable to regulatory drift (eID-Threat-Models).