BankID Reaches 97% in Norway. itsme Reaches 80% in Belgium. Both Are Private Sector. Here's the Business Lesson.

Part 4 of 5 — A Trinsic Companion Series to PwC's Digital Identities Across the World Report

There's a common assumption in digital identity: that the most widely adopted systems are government-built. National IDs, government portals, public infrastructure. It makes intuitive sense, government is the natural anchor of identity.

PwC's global survey complicates that assumption in an important way. Several of the world's highest-adoption digital identity systems were not built by governments. They were built by banks.

Understanding why that happened, and what it means for your business, is one of the most useful takeaways from PwC's report.

The Private-Sector Leaders

Belgium — itsme: ~80% adoption

itsme is a consortium of Belgium's major banks and telecoms. It didn't grow because of a government mandate, it grew because it became the fastest, most convenient way to log in to banking, insurance, and e-commerce. Today it's embedded in hundreds of services across Belgium and is widely regarded as one of the most successful private-sector digital identity deployments in the world.

Norway — BankID Norway: ~97% adoption, 4.5 million users, 16,000+ services

Norway's BankID is similarly bank-led. It became the national de facto standard not by government decree but by becoming indispensable, embedded into banking, government portals, insurance, e-commerce, and more services than any other country PwC studied. 97% adoption is not an accident. It's the result of building a system that people genuinely need in their daily lives.

Sweden — BankID Sweden: 99% of adults aged 18–65

Sweden's BankID is used by virtually every working-age adult in the country. Like Norway and Belgium, the key was embedding the ID in the financial services layer, the place where almost everyone already had a trusted relationship.

Denmark — MitID: ~93% adoption

MitID replaced the previous NemID system and is now the required standard for Danish online banking, government services, and private-sector applications. It demonstrates what happens when a well-designed eID becomes mandatory in a high-frequency context: adoption follows.

What This Tells Businesses

The private-sector success of these systems has two important implications:

First, you don't need to wait for government programs to mature. In markets like the United States, where government-led mDL adoption is still in early stages, businesses sometimes conclude that digital ID acceptance is a future problem. The European bank-led model shows otherwise. Private-sector networks carry millions of pre-verified users right now, and those users are accustomed to using their digital ID across many services.

Second, the most resilient acceptance strategies are multi-source. A digital ID strategy that depends entirely on any one government program is a brittle strategy. The best approach combines government-issued credentials (mDLs, national eIDs) with private-sector networks (BankIDs, itsme, Yoti, Freja eID) — giving you access to the broadest possible pool of verified users regardless of which specific program any individual user has enrolled in.

This is precisely why Trinsic's network spans both categories. A single integration gives you access to bank-led systems like itsme, BankID Norway, BankID Sweden, and iDIN, alongside government eIDs like SPID, Smart-ID, and MitID, as well as private-sector global networks like Yoti and Freja eID.

The Action

Don't let "we're waiting to see what happens with the government program" be your digital ID strategy.

The users who carry itsme, BankID, or iDIN are real, numerous, and ready to use their digital ID with your business today. The businesses that start accepting them now are building conversion advantages, fraud reductions, and integration experience that will matter as the rest of the market catches up.

See which private-sector networks Trinsic supports → Talk to the Trinsic team about building a multi-source acceptance strategy → Get started with Trinsic →

This is Part 4 of Trinsic's companion series to PwC Strategy& "Digital Identities Across the World" (2025). Data sourced from PwC's primary report. Trinsic makes no claims about the accuracy of PwC's underlying research.