Age verification has taken about three or four years to reach the concept stage, and that's the first stage that will be rolled out.

The legal framework behind all this was released all the way back in 2014 and has been officially adopted ten years later.

Officially, by December 2026, each member state must have at least one official wallet solution available for its citizens.

That said, eIDAS 2.0 also mandated that, as of this year, whatever Slovak digital identity solution has been rolled out so far must also work in other member states. In my experience, different governments adopt different foreign identity services at different paces, most of them seemingly missing the deadline.

Banks and other private institutions permitted to ask for ID are supposed to accept the wallet solutions by late 2027.

I expect deadlines to be missed given we've barely gotten the age verification PoC done, but with the groundwork laid out, things might just work out.