Our previous article explains why no national wallet responds yet to an unregistered verifier. That doesn't mean you need to wait to build and validate your integration: the reference ecosystem, funded by the European Commission, exists for exactly that.
The EUDI reference ecosystem
Published as open source by the
eu-digital-identity-wallet organization, it covers
all three roles of an OpenID4VP exchange:
- A publicly hosted test issuer
(
issuer.eudiw.dev): issues test PIDs and mDLs, in both standard formats (SD-JWT VC and mdoc), via OpenID4VCI. No real ID document required. - An installable reference wallet (Android APK published on GitHub Releases, not the Play Store): its development builds use demonstration trust anchors rather than the real production trust list, so no RPRC/RPAC registration is needed to test against it.
- Your verifier: Todis, in our case.
Enough to run a real, end-to-end OpenID4VP flow: issuing a test credential, presenting it via QR code, server-side verification, with no part of it simulated.
National sandboxes
Several member states are also opening their own sandboxes, with different access rules:
- Germany (SPRIND): explicitly allows testing by companies not established in Germany. Only a future commercial launch would require a local establishment. Sign up via an intent form, with your use case specified.
- France (France Identité): a public sandbox exists, geared more toward demonstration than full integration at this stage.
What this covers, and what it doesn't replace
These environments are enough to validate your entire technical integration: building the authorization request, handling the QR code or deep link, receiving and verifying the response, processing the disclosed claims. That's exactly what you'll do in production, with the same Todis API calls.
What they don't replace: the trust a real production wallet will place in your verifier identity, which depends on the national register of your country of establishment (see our article on RPRC/RPAC). The two pieces are independent: one gets built now, the other activates once the register opens.