Anyone who travels frequently knows all too well the burden of chasing the physical passport before every departure, the panic of “I can’t find the document” that always hits at the worst possible moment. Google has decided it’s time to do something about it.
During the Money 20/20 Europe event, Google announced the arrival of the ID Pass inside Google Wallet for many European countries by the end of the summer of 2026, and Italy is among them. It isn’t the first major update in this area: Google had already extended support for digital identities to India, Singapore, Taiwan, and Brazil in April, after an initial rollout in the United States and the United Kingdom. Now it’s Europe’s turn, a regulatory landscape that is undoubtedly the most intricate ground to navigate.
What the ID Pass is and what it’s for
The ID Pass is a digital version of the passport stored directly on the smartphone, encrypted and without copies in the cloud. It should not be confused with the digital identity card, it does not replace the physical document in any context where the law requires it, and it is not the same as the national IT-Wallet found on the IO app.
Its use, at least in the current phase, concerns online identity and age verification. Imagine needing to access a streaming platform that requires proof of being of legal age: with the ID Pass you can do so without sharing your name, address, or date of birth. The system operates with selective credentials, meaning it shares only the attribute requested at that moment, not your entire identity.
The partnership with Sparkasse Bank, announced alongside the service, is the first concrete example of this principle applied to the banking sector. The German bank will become the first European institution to use Google Wallet’s encrypted credentials to allow a user to prove they meet the necessary requirements to a retailer, all without exposing sensitive data.
How it works
The activation procedure isn’t particularly complicated. You need to photograph the main page of the passport, read the NFC chip of the document with your phone, and complete the identity verification via a video selfie. Once your identity is verified, the digital document is encrypted and stored locally on the device.
The selective-credentials mechanism is arguably the most interesting part of the entire process. You don’t share your full identity, only the specific information required by the service.
Does an app ask whether you’re of legal age? It receives a yes or no, not your full name and birth date.
In Italy, about 71% of citizens already own a digital identity tool, but only half actively use digital wallets, and mainly for payments rather than documents. Knowing that the solution exists doesn’t automatically make it natural to use. And that is precisely where Google aims to insert itself.
Europe is ready for change
There’s a much more ambitious project behind the scenes: the EUDI Wallet, the European digital wallet mandated by the eIDAS 2.0 regulation. The rule requires all member states to provide their citizens with at least one European Digital Identity Wallet by November 2026. Across Europe, 22 public and private projects are active in this area: 11 are already operational, but none has yet been certified as compliant with the regulation.
Italy participates in two consortia, NOBID and POTENTIAL, and is working on the certification path, but the milestone of full European compliance has not yet been reached. On the adoption front, however, the numbers speak clearly: the IT-Wallet on the IO app has surpassed 10 million activations after the 2024 pilot launch and general availability in December 2025, with over 17 million digital documents uploaded. The issue is that these documents, at present, can only be used for in-person verifications: the digital driving license works during a traffic stop, but not for boarding a plane or interacting online with the public administration.
Google has also stated that it does not rule out collaborating with the EUDI Wallet.
