The Irish government is testing its own official digital wallet, which will include a way to verify a user’s age to access social media platforms, before it becomes publicly available later this year. In its press release, the government’s Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitization said that people can store digital versions of their birth certificates, driving licenses, European Health Cards and more.
Frank Feighan, the department’s minister, said this testing phase will help inform the development of the digital wallet and ensure it is user-friendly. The government has not determined when the official digital wallet will move beyond the testing phase, but Ireland is required to create a digital wallet by the end of 2026 as part of an EU regulation.
“This will be able to facilitate the implementation of the secure age verification capability and online safety code set out in Digital Ireland, under which specified platforms must have age verification measures in place to specifically help protect children and young people from harm online,” Feighan said of Ireland’s digital wallet.
The pilot phase will be conducted on an opt-in basis and a brief survey is available to the government for comments and concerns. As well as Ireland, several other EU member states are working on their own age verification methods. Earlier this year, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced a law to ban social media for anyone under the age of 16.
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