TL;DR: The FIDO Alliance is extending its passkey model into verifiable credentials and agentic AI authentication, as governments and wallets push identity beyond passwords and into cross-border, machine-mediated use, according to Hopae. Identity governance now has to treat wallets, verifiable credentials and agents as one trust chain, not separate problems.
At a glance
What this is: NHI Mgmt Group's analysis, drawing on Hopae's report: FIDO interoperability is moving from passkeys into verifiable credentials and agentic authentication, linking wallets, issuers and relying parties.
Why it matters: IAM teams now need to govern cross-border credential acceptance, wallet trust and agent accountability as one identity problem rather than separate integration projects.
Context
FIDO-style authentication solved one part of the identity problem: proving a person without sharing a password. The next problem is broader because digital credentials now need to move across wallets, issuers and relying parties without breaking assurance or usability.
That shift matters because authentication is no longer only about a user signing in. It now includes verifiable credentials, device and wallet trust, and the question of how a verified human remains linked to actions taken by an agentic commerce identity or other delegated system.
Key questions
Q: Did passkeys solve cross-border identity portability?
A: No. Passkeys strengthen local authentication with phishing-resistant cryptography, but they do not solve cross-border identity portability, because relying parties still need shared trust policy, presentation rules, and account matching logic. Portability across jurisdictions depends on federation, assurance alignment, recovery, and governance of the underlying human identity.
Q: Can digital credentials be trusted across different wallets?
A: Yes, but only when trust is established per wallet and per issuer. A digital credential is trusted across wallets through issuer authenticity, signed credential verification, and wallet integrity checks, not by the wallet brand alone. The verifier still needs proof that the credential was issued by the expected authority and has not been altered.
Q: How should teams govern agent payments with delegated identity?
A: Teams should govern agent payments with delegated identity by limiting the agent’s authority to a narrow payment scope, binding each payment action to a human owner, and logging traceability back to the accountable approver. Use least privilege, short-lived credentials, payment thresholds, approval workflow controls, and revocation when the agent’s task ends or behaviour changes.
Q: What is the difference between authentication and credential verification?
A: Authentication proves who or what is presenting a credential, while credential verification checks that the credential itself is valid, authentic and unexpired. In practice, a system may authenticate a holder with a passkey, then verify the credential signature, issuer status and claims before granting access.
Technical breakdown
Why passkey interoperability does not solve credential portability
Passkeys standardised phishing-resistant sign-in, but they did not eliminate the trust problems that appear when identities must cross issuers, wallets and relying parties. Verifiable credentials add a different layer: they carry claims, not just authentication assertions, so the system must decide who issued them, how they were bound, and how they are verified in another domain. That makes portability a governance problem as much as a technical one. See the Passwordless and Passkeys Guide.
Practical implication: Treat wallet acceptance, issuer trust and verifier policy as separate controls, not one sign-in decision.
How digital credential ecosystems change identity assurance
Digital credential ecosystems extend identity assurance beyond login into claim presentation, wallet certification and reliance decisions. In practice, the relying party is no longer only checking that an authenticator is strong; it is checking whether a credential was issued by a trusted scheme, whether the wallet preserved integrity, and whether the presentation fits the requested use case. That is a broader trust model than password replacement.
Practical implication: Define assurance rules for credential issuance, presentation and acceptance before onboarding new wallets or schemes.
Why agentic AI needs an authentication model tied to human authority
Agentic AI changes authentication because the subject acting is not always the same subject approving or originating the action. A payment or task performed by an agent needs a trustworthy chain back to the human or organisation that authorised it, plus a way to distinguish delegated action from autonomous escalation. That introduces a new identity boundary around delegated execution, not just around the login event. See the Agentic Commerce Identity Guide.
Practical implication: Model agent permissions as delegated authority with explicit origin, scope and traceability requirements.
NHI Mgmt Group analysis
Credential portability is becoming an identity governance problem, not just an interoperability project. Passkeys proved that shared standards can replace passwords at scale, but verifiable credentials raise the stakes because acceptance now depends on issuer trust, wallet integrity and relying-party policy. That means the control question moves from sign-in strength to trust chain governance. Practitioners should govern portability as a lifecycle issue, not as a one-time integration decision.
Wallets will become enforcement points, which makes their certification and recovery rules material. Once credentials live in wallets across jurisdictions and device types, the wallet is part of the trust boundary. Recovery, revocation and device binding become assurance controls, not user-experience details. If a wallet cannot be trusted to preserve credential state, the relying party inherits that weakness. Practitioners should treat wallet governance as part of IAM design.
Delegated action needs a traceable human anchor, especially when agents initiate payments. The authentication problem for agentic AI is not whether an agent can present a credential, but whether its action can be tied back to a verified human mandate. Without that anchor, accountability shifts from the principal to the system and becomes harder to audit. Practitioners should treat delegated execution as a distinct identity pattern with its own approval and traceability model.
Cross-border identity will force IAM teams to separate assurance from local policy. A scheme can be valid in one market and still fail a relying party’s risk model in another. That is why federation, credential presentation and local acceptance policy cannot be collapsed into one control. The named concept here is credential trust chaining: the end-to-end link between issuer, wallet, verifier and delegated actor. Practitioners should build policy around the chain, not the individual credential.
What this signals
Credential trust chaining: identity programmes now have to govern the link between issuer, wallet, verifier and delegated actor, not just the strength of the authenticator. That changes how assurance, revocation and acceptance policy are designed across federation and digital credential use.
Cross-border identity will increasingly fail at the policy boundary rather than the login boundary. Practitioners should expect more pressure to standardise acceptance rules, recovery paths and auditability for wallet-held credentials as digital identity moves into payments and delegated actions.
For practitioners
- Define wallet trust rules Set explicit acceptance criteria for wallet certification, device binding, recovery and revocation before enabling digital credential acceptance across borders.
- Separate issuance from acceptance policy Document which issuers, schemes and presentation rules are acceptable for each relying-party use case so assurance does not rely on ad hoc decisions.
- Model delegated actions as scoped authority Require each agent or delegated workflow to carry a human or organisational mandate, scope limit and auditable origin for every payment or task.
- Build recovery and revocation paths for credentials Ensure that a lost wallet, revoked credential or expired scheme can be invalidated quickly without breaking legitimate users across regions.
Key takeaways
- Passkey adoption was an important step, but it does not by itself solve how identities and credentials move safely across schemes, wallets and relying parties.
- As verifiable credentials and delegated actions spread, the real control point shifts to issuer trust, wallet governance and traceable authority.
- IAM teams should treat portability, recovery and delegated execution as part of one identity governance model rather than separate implementation tracks.
Related NHI Mgmt Group resources: Passwordless and Passkeys Guide · Authentication Guide · Agentic Commerce Identity Guide
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Agentic AI Top 10 addresses the attack and risk surface, while NIST SP 800-63, NIST AI RMF and NIST CSF 2.0 set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| NIST SP 800-63 | SP 800-63C — Federation | The post centres on federated acceptance of credentials across issuers and relying parties. |
| SP 800-63B — Authentication | Passkeys and phishing-resistant sign-in remain part of the identity model discussed here. | |
| Recommendation — Define federation trust rules for credential issuance, presentation and verifier acceptance before onboarding new schemes. Use phishing-resistant authenticators where sign-in assurance still matters and bind them to clear recovery rules. | ||
| OWASP Agentic AI Top 10 | ASI03 — Identity & Privilege Abuse | Agentic payment and task delegation creates identity and privilege questions for autonomous execution. |
| Recommendation — Constrain delegated agent authority with explicit scope, origin and traceability controls. | ||
| NIST AI RMF | GOVERN — AI Governance and Accountability | The agentic AI angle requires governance over who authorises actions and how accountability is retained. |
| Recommendation — Assign governance, accountability and escalation rules for AI-mediated actions before production use. | ||
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AA-05 — Access Permissions, Entitlements and Authorizations | Credential acceptance and delegated access both depend on defined authorisation boundaries. |
| Recommendation — Review entitlements for wallets and agents against explicit authorisation policy and business need. | ||
Key terms
- Passkey: A passkey is a passwordless credential based on public key cryptography. A private key stays on the user’s device, while a public key is stored by the service. During login, the device signs a challenge after local unlock, which reduces phishing and eliminates shared secret reuse.
- Verifiable Credentials (VCs): Verifiable Credentials are digital statements that prove a claim about a person, device, or service without exposing unnecessary underlying data. They use cryptographic signatures and standardized presentation rules so a relying party can check authenticity, integrity, and issuer trust, supporting privacy-preserving identity verification across human and non-human identity flows.
- Digital Identity Wallet: A digital identity wallet is software that stores and presents credentials for a person or organisation. It is a portability layer, not an authorization system. The wallet moves verified proof between parties, while the relying party still has to decide whether the proof is sufficient for the requested action.
- Agentic Authentication: Agentic authentication is the process of proving and controlling the identity of an AI agent or autonomous software before it can access systems, data, or tools. In practice, it binds a machine runtime to verifiable credentials, policy checks, and session boundaries so actions can be authorized, traced, and limited.
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Published by the NHIMG editorial team on November 9, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group, the independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org