d-you digital wallet: criticism grows 100 days before launch

The state digital wallet d-you is due to launch in exactly 100 days, on 2 January 2027. As netzpolitik.org reported on 24 September 2026, it will initially do only what the national identity card does. The driving licence and the photo ID are to follow later.

What the federal government promises

Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger (CDU) told the debate that security and data protection were a matter for the state, while the decision on whether to use the wallet lay with citizens. The data are to be stored encrypted on the device. Use remains voluntary.

What critics say is missing

Rebecca Lenhard (Greens) criticised the launch plan for leaving out both pseudonyms and zero-knowledge proofs. She said the two were actually required, for age verification as well as under the underlying EU law.

In a statement, the Federation of German Consumer Organisations (vzbv) calls for pseudonymous use, for data to be passed on only selectively, and for data-minimising age verification to be available from the outset. Without these properties, it says, most consumers would be reluctant to adopt the wallet. The consumer advocates are targeting precisely the practical use cases for which the wallet is meant to look particularly attractive: identity checks, age verification, proof of entitlements.

Sonja Lemke (Die Linke) pointed to an October 2024 decision by the Federal Ministry of the Interior on signed credentials. A signature, she said, makes the issued data valuable for data trading and identity theft. Lemke recalled that the BSI, the Federal Data Protection Commissioner and IT security researchers had warned about this architecture. She called for the launch date to be postponed.

The timetable

The EU requirements set the legal framework: member states must provide their citizens with a wallet, and the underlying regulation provides for both pseudonyms and zero-knowledge proofs. In Germany that begins with d-you, though according to netzpolitik.org it is considerably smaller than originally planned. Alongside security and data protection, the report names a third open point: preparations in the municipalities.

One sentence in the debate summed up the trade-off. Anyone who wanted to protect data in this way, said Sonja Lemke with a view to the signed data, would also leave their bicycle outside unlocked. Whether the technical improvements can be implemented by 2 January therefore remains open. The Bundestag debate shows above all one thing: the dispute is shifting from whether the wallet should exist to how much data minimisation can technically be achieved before launch.

Pseudonyms, selective disclosure, age verification without a data trail: the demands are concrete, and so is the launch date.