OpenWallet Foundation announces Google as a premier member

The OpenWallet Foundation (OWF), an open source project advancing digital identity, access and payments by fostering collaboration across industries, announced Google as a premier member. Google’s membership reinforces the OWF’s mission to drive open source interoperability and innovation in the realm of digital wallets and payments.

Additionally, OWF also welcomes its first contribution of code from the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP). Already a member of OWF, MOSIP is an open source platform to implement digital identity systems at a national scale. This contribution kickstarts the development of critical components of an open source software engine for portable and secure digital wallets. 

Hosted by Linux Foundation Europe, the OWF provides safe harbor for companies, non profits, and the public sector to create open source software for interoperable digital wallets together.

“Six months after our launch we are delighted to welcome Google Wallet as a member of the OpenWallet Foundation,” said Daniel Goldscheider – Founder and Executive Director of the OpenWallet Foundation. “They are a global leader in the wallet space and their expertise will be invaluable to furthering our shared goal of working together to create a healthy wallet ecosystem. Google Wallet’s participation underscores the growing recognition of the importance of open source software for wallets. At the heart of OpenWallet are developers and their projects and we are proud to announce that MOSIP is contributing two projects.”

“Google has a long-standing commitment to building open, interoperable solutions and we’ve applied that ethos to Google Wallet,” said Jenny Cheng, VP and GM of Google Wallet. “We look forward to working closely with other OWF members to advocate for solutions that ensure we’re building a privacy-forward wallet for everyone, everywhere.”

MOSIP, a member since the OWF first launched, will contribute code components for the issuance of verifiable credentials and for BLE-based credential sharing, based on OpenID specification. These components have been developed as part of MOSIP’s mobile wallet suite Inji.

“MOSIP shares with OWF the goals of creating open, secure, and interoperable systems for trusted transactions,” said Sanjay Jain, chairperson, MOSIP Technology Committee. “We believe wallets are the future of how people will use their digital IDs. We are glad to collaborate with the OWF community to build the necessary components for a privacy-preserving, secure wallet engine in the open source.”

“I’m beyond thrilled to see OWF, the first project hosted under the auspices of Linux Foundation Europe, achieve these two strategic milestones,” said Gabriele Columbro, General Manager of Linux Foundation Europe. “Google joining OWF is a huge validation of our vision to bring together global industry and technology players to collaborate on critical open source projects highly aligned with European priorities, and the MOSIP upcoming contribution shows once again the unique power open source has to build on each others achievements, inevitably accelerating the project’s progress towards delivering concrete code-first solutions against those priorities.”

As the latest member of the OWF, Google joins a diverse group of member and supporting organizations working together to drive interoperability and innovation in digital wallets and payments.

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The OpenWallet Foundation (OWF) brings developers together to collaborate on standards-based OSS components that issuers, wallet providers and relying parties can use to bootstrap implementations that preserve user choice, security and privacy.   With their Government Advisory Council OWF brings the public and private sector together to work towards open, secure and interoperable digital wallets. OWF is an open initiative under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation and headquartered in Europe.