Choosing a verifiable credentials provider: a checklist for education.
A good provider for digital certificates issues with the open standards that swiyu and the EU Digital Identity Wallet support, lets the institution sign under its own identity, describes learning achievements so that other institutions understand them, supports withdrawal, and can be replaced without losing the credentials already issued. The questions below make these properties checkable in a tender or a first call.
Standards and wallets
- Which credential format and protocols do you issue with, and which wallets have accepted your credentials?
- Can learners use swiyu and EUDI wallets, or only an app of yours?
- Do you support selective disclosure, so a learner can share a qualification without a date of birth?
Identity and trust
- Under whose identifier are credentials signed: ours or yours?
- Can our identity be registered in the swiyu trust infrastructure?
- Does our issuer identity stay ours if we change provider?
Content and semantics
- Can a credential carry learning outcomes, workload and form of assessment, as the 2022 Council Recommendation on micro-credentials describes?
- Are the fields mapped to the European Learning Model?
- Can our own design and branding be applied without custom development?
Operations and exit
- Can we issue to a whole cohort at once?
- How does a withdrawn credential fail every later verification?
- If we leave, do the credentials we issued stay verifiable?
How SAPIO answers
SAPIO issues SD-JWT VC credentials over OpenID4VCI with did:webvh issuer identities. Education credentials are mapped to the European Learning Model, support selective disclosure, carry the institution’s own design, can be issued to a whole cohort at once and can be withdrawn.
Questions
Is a PDF with a QR code a verifiable credential?
No. A QR code on a PDF usually points to a web page of the issuer or its provider, so verification depends on that page staying online. A verifiable credential carries its own digital signature and can be checked without contacting anyone.
Should we wait until the e-ID and the EUDI Wallet are everywhere?
Credential design, issuer identity and processes can be prepared now. Credentials issued with open standards today can be presented from the national wallets as they become available.