New Zealand's Digital Identity Services Trust Framework, enacted through legislation and operational since July 2025, establishes a government-accredited system for digital identity services based on international standards including W3C Verifiable Credentials, ISO 18013-5 (mobile driving licence), and ISO 23220 (mobile identity). The framework mandates that all accredited identity credentials be privacy-preserving, controlled by the holder, and designed so that neither the issuing authority nor the verifying party can track usage patterns.
At the Hui Taumata in August 2025, the government called for vendors to align on a trusted verifiable credentials ecosystem, and by December 2025, the New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) was being retooled as a verifiable credential. Digital Identity New Zealand, the industry body, published a roadmap in October 2025 focusing on interoperable, privacy-preserving credentials for both individuals and organizations.
New Zealand's approach is notable for being one of the first nationally legislated digital identity frameworks built on decentralized, standards-based credentials rather than centralized databases. This design philosophy — where identity data remains with the individual rather than being stored in government or corporate servers — represents a fundamentally different model from China's centralized social credit system or India's Aadhaar biometric database. As nations worldwide grapple with digital identity infrastructure, NZ's framework offers a privacy-first template that could influence EU eIDAS 2.0 implementation and broader adoption of verifiable credentials.