We do not associate with lowly lunatics that believe normal a demand to have google or apple accounts.
And then effectively bully the rest of the population to also use it, because companies/service-providers make using alternative methods much harder to use, because they are more expensive.
It's unfortunately predictable how this will play out.
What am I missing?
Or are you talking about non-electronic means of authentication, like presenting a passport or driver's license?
Yes, I think that would be a more appropriate comparison. Alternatives are very expensive and very hard to implement in-house
This is about government-issued credentials. When you provide a digital service in the EU where that service is required to determine the age of a user then the EU wallet is able to prove that the user is above a certain age. Or if you actually need to verify the legal identity of a user, then the EU wallet will be able to provide that identity to you. It is as official as it can get.
If you want to use your own age-verification or id-verification, then you need to rely on face scanning and other creepy stuff. The EU wallet is better in that regard, but it's existence will also mean that the EU and national governments will push harder for people to be identified online and offline. Using the internet anonymously will get a lot harder.
And when you lost your phone say bye to your life.
https://x.com/aniltalwar2/status/2113962947760590969?a=c-N4S...
The idea is that every person will have the option to use a wallet. For businesses of a certain size or type (those involved in strongly authenticating their customers, or very large platforms with more than 45M EU users) have to accept it by the end of 2027.
More details on the wallet here: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/eudi-wallet/