How the EUDI Wallet can make large-scale fake-profile abuse harder on P2P marketplaces, while reducing the need to collect and retain ID-document scans.
Fake profiles are expensive for marketplaces, not only because of direct fraud, but because of the steady loss of trust they create over time. The damage rarely comes from one dramatic incident. It comes from fake sellers, throwaway buyer accounts, manipulated reviews, promotion abuse, and repeat offenders returning under new profiles.
In security terms, much of this is a Sybil problem: one actor creates many accounts and presents them as different people. Traditional controls such as email verification, phone OTPs and basic document checks can raise the cost of abuse, but they rarely change the underlying economics of account creation. The EUDI Wallet does not make fake profiles disappear, and it does not remove the need for trust-and-safety policy. What it may offer is something more practical: a way to make large-scale fake-profile creation materially harder, while reducing the need to collect and retain passport scans, selfies and other sensitive identity data.
For most marketplaces, fake-profile abuse scales when creating a new account is cheap, fast and difficult to challenge. A bad actor can open multiple seller accounts, rotate buyer profiles to exploit promotions, or use a cluster of accounts to manipulate ratings and reviews. If identity checks are weak, the platform ends up fighting the same actor again and again under different profiles.
That is why the quality of the identity signal matters. The EUDI model is different from standard document-upload flows because it lets the platform rely on a credential issued inside a regulated wallet ecosystem rather than asking the marketplace to inspect and store raw identity documents itself. Under the revised eIDAS framework, European Digital Identity Wallets are to be provided under an electronic identification scheme with assurance level high.
The core credential in the EUDI ecosystem is the Person Identification Data, or PID. The Commission’s PID materials describe it as the wallet’s core identity credential, issued and signed by the Member State, and used to prove a person’s identity in digital interactions. The legal and technical framework also ties PID issuance and wallet operation to high-assurance identity processes.
For a marketplace, the practical value is not that fraud disappears. It is that creating large numbers of verified accounts becomes harder than it is today. The framework is built around strong identity verification, cryptographic binding, and explicit user approval before data is presented. That makes it harder to mass-produce verified accounts using the same low-cost methods that work against weaker onboarding flows.
That still leaves important limitations. A stolen real identity is still a real identity. A coerced or recruited user could still pass a legitimate check. And if a marketplace chooses to let one verified person open several accounts, wallet verification will not solve that policy decision on its own. What it can do is give trust-and-safety teams a much stronger starting signal and raise the cost of abuse that depends on cheap account creation.
At a high level, the flow is straightforward. The marketplace sends a verification request, often through a QR code on desktop or a deep link on mobile. The wallet shows who is asking and what data is being requested. The user authenticates and approves the request. The wallet then returns a signed presentation containing the approved attributes, and the relying party validates that presentation before deciding how to proceed. The technical framework also requires wallets to support selective disclosure and to minimise unnecessary data transfer.
One practical design pattern is already visible in pilot work. In a 2025 NOBID pilot, the relying party generated and associated a unique cryptographic hash of the PID with the user’s account. For marketplaces, that points to an interesting implementation option: bind an account to a verified identity signal without necessarily keeping the full credential payload in the application database.
This stronger identity signal matters most when it can be used without forcing the platform to collect and retain raw identity documents.
One of the most significant features of the EUDI model is selective disclosure. The implementing rules require wallet solutions to support selective disclosure of PID attributes and other attested attributes, and the Commission’s age-verification materials describe practical flows such as proving that a user is over 18 without revealing a full birth date or other identifying information. The same framework is also designed to support data minimisation and unlinkability in cases where full identification is not required.
For marketplaces, that can reduce both friction and liability. In some verification flows, the platform may be able to confirm that a user is an adult or that they have completed a high-assurance identity check without collecting a passport image, storing a selfie, or retaining more identity data than the use case actually needs. That does not remove GDPR obligations altogether, but it can materially reduce the need to store the most sensitive kinds of raw identity data.
The biggest change is not that every user must reveal their full legal identity. It is that marketplaces can build a stronger gradient of trust.
A low-risk buyer flow might still use email only. A new seller flow might require a PID-backed verification step. A higher-risk category, such as rentals, vehicles or expensive electronics, might require verified status on both sides before certain actions are unlocked.
For many platforms, that is likely to be the most practical starting point. Not universal verification, but targeted verification at the points where fake accounts create the highest cost. High-assurance wallet verification is most useful when it is tied to clear product policy: which actions need stronger proof, which signals should unlock additional trust, and whether verified status should be bound to one account, one role or one transaction path.
Marketplace teams should also be careful not to over-assume what will be available immediately. The amended eIDAS framework says European Digital Identity Wallets should include functionality to generate user-chosen and managed pseudonyms for online authentication. That is highly relevant for marketplaces, because it points toward a future model in which a user may be able to prove “I am the same verified person as before” without repeatedly disclosing the same identity attributes. But this is still better treated as an important direction of travel than as a universally available building block today.
The most useful question is probably not whether the EUDI Wallet can eliminate fake profiles. It is where high-assurance, privacy-preserving verification would create the most value in your marketplace.
For most teams, that means making a few concrete decisions early:
which user journeys need only age or residency proof
which actions should require a stronger verified-person signal
whether verified status should be bound to one marketplace account or used only for certain higher-risk flows
whether the platform should store raw attributes, a derived trust signal, or an account-binding value instead
Those are product and policy decisions as much as technical ones. The wallet framework creates new options, but it does not remove the need for clear marketplace rules.
Authbound is building the integration layer that helps marketplaces accept EUDI Wallet verification through a standard API and SDK. The aim is to let trust-and-safety teams focus on verification policy, account-linking rules and user experience, rather than protocol plumbing.
If you are planning your marketplace identity roadmap for 2026 and beyond, reach out at [email protected].
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