Wallet and reusable proof of age

A reusable proof-of-age credential can let a person show that they meet a threshold without disclosing their identity or exact birth date to every service. Privacy depends on issuance, presentation, linkability and retention—not the word 'wallet' alone.

For: platform, wallet, privacy, trust-and-safety and architecture teams. This is independent information, not legal, compliance or security advice.

Issue once, present selectively

1. An approved source establishes the person's age.
2. An issuer creates a protected age credential or over-threshold proof.
3. The wallet stores or manages it.
4. A service requests the minimum age result.
5. The wallet presents proof and the service validates it.

Privacy properties to verify

• The relying service receives no unnecessary identity fields.
• The issuer cannot learn every service visited.
• Different services cannot trivially correlate the user.
• Presentations are protected from replay.
• Logs and device identifiers do not recreate cross-service tracking.

Trust and status

The verifier needs to know which issuers are trusted, whether the credential is authentic/current and whether the presentation belongs to the holder. Governance must also support correction, expiry, revocation and replacement.

Alternatives remain necessary

Wallet use should be voluntary and people without a suitable wallet, device, document or onboarding route need an effective alternative. Do not make the privacy-preserving option available only to the easiest-to-serve users.

Evidence and limits

MyID separates enacted rules, official implementation material, testing and vendor claims. A source can establish what its publisher says; it does not prove that every product, deployment or interpretation works as claimed. Where Irish implementation remains unsettled, this page says so.

• European Commission approach to age verification
• EU Age Verification Solution Q&A
• Regulation (EU) 2024/1183
• European Commission EUDI Wallet Toolbox and ARF

Sources checked 22 August 2026. Re-check the linked primary material before making a consequential decision.

Next useful pages

• EU solution tracker
• Document age checks
• Age privacy