The European Business Wallet aims to harmonise digital business tools across the EU to ensure fair competition, particularly benefiting SMEs and micro-businesses.
The EU Commission has proposed a regulation on 19 November 2025 to establish European Business Wallets to simplify business operations across the EU.
Designed for Businesses and developed by Businesses, the EU Business Wallers will modernise and simplify economic activities within the Single Market. It will strengthen the competitiveness of European enterprises, expecting to unlock at least EUR 150 billion in annual savings, transforming potential obstacles into opportunities for growth and competitiveness.
It will allow companies to securely identify, authenticate, and exchange data with full legal effect and trust across the EU. By using these European Business Wallets, companies will be able to save time and reduce paperwork as its core features will be legally equivalent to performing actions in person, on paper, or through other legally accepted methods.
Businesses will be able to digitally:
- Identify and authenticate with a unique and persistent identifier
- Sign, timestamp or seal documents
- Securely create, store and exchange verified digital documents such as licences, certificates, permits
- Communicate digitally, securely and efficiently with customers, suppliers, businesses partners or public administrations across the EU
It will also lower cross-border barriers to scale-up and run a business. This is crucial for all economic operators, in particular for Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which make up 99% of enterprises in the EUand which use up 30-50% of their time on administration.
The technical architecture and features of the Business Wallets will build on the one for the EU Digital Identity Wallets and offer secure, and interoperable cloud-based identity solutions for economic operators and public administrations of all sizes across the EU.
The Business Wallets will give companies a trusted and interoperable digital environment for storing, managing, and sharing verifiable credentials, including compliance certificates, thereby aiding in simplifying compliance obligations and automating to an extend that process. Companies could in this context use European Business Wallets to demonstrate conformity with multiple EU rules through a single, harmonised solution, while public sector bodies are provided with secure, immediate access to validated information.
It will help to create the foundations of the EU’s Digital Public Infrastructure. This underpins a wide range of use-cases such as know-your-customer, startup funding, branch creation, eProcurement, and Sustainability Reporting. Some of the potential use-cases for businesses are already being explored in the WeBuild consortium, a project funded under the Digital Europe Programme. This project brings together more than 180 public authorities and private companies across 26 countries and will work on important business and supply chain use-cases.
Next steps
The proposal now awaits adoption by the European Parliament and Member States through the ordinary legislative procedure.
According to the Commission proposal, after adoption, all levels of public administration across the EU, including EU institutions, bodies and agencies, will have two years to support the use of the Business Wallets with transitory measures for leveraging existing similar systems at Member State level.
In parallel, the Commission will work closely with Member States and the private sector to define the technical standards and requirements for European Business Wallets through ongoing efforts under the European Digital Identity Framework and in large-scale pilot projects.
Background
As highlighted in Mario Draghi report “Future of European Competitiveness“, in 2024, Europe faces an administrative burden challenge with 55% of SMEs recognising it as a major hurdle. Presently, businesses devote excessive time and resources—up to 2.5% of turnover for SMEs—on manual compliance tasks. Several actions that could reduce administrative burdens are mentioned, including increasing digitalisation and simplification of Business to business (B2B) and Business to government (B2G) checks.
This was reflected in the Competitiveness Compass, which highlighted the importance of European Business Wallets of removing these barriers for economic operators within the Single Market.
In line with the Single Market Strategy, European Business Wallets will reduce existing barriers that hinder intra-EU trade and investments, assist SMEs in operating and scaling up their activities, and supports businesses by accelerating digitalisation.
The new proposal will be amending the European Digital Identity Regulation (Regulation (EU) 910/2014) in a limited manner.
