A Year Later, in Singapore: Reflecting on IATA WDS 2026
Last September and November, I flew to Montreal and Geneva for the IATA Data & Tech PoC Workshop. We had a vision, a roadmap, and the belief that wallet-based digital identity could genuinely change how travelers move through airports and how airlines verify the partners they work with. What we didn't have yet was the thing every project needs to become real: a working demo, shown to the people who will actually use it.
This week, in Singapore, we had that demo. And it worked.
The Project, One Year On
The two projects I've been contributing to as part of Hopae — Verifying Digital Identity in the Distribution Process and Contactless Travel — are part of the official IATA Proof of Concept Cycle 2. These are not side experiments. They're
pilots that airlines like Air Canada, British Airways, Qatar Airways, Japan Airlines, and Air New Zealand have bought into, alongside airports (Hong Kong International, Bangalore International) and technology partners ranging from Google Wallet and Amadeus to SITA, NEC, Tip.com and Infosys.
For the past months, the work has been quiet: specs, code, interoperability tests, long threads about edge cases in OpenID4VP and ISO 23220(Photo ID). You don't really feel the weight of what you're building until you're in a room with the airlines who asked for it.
At WDS this week, I felt it.
The Presentation
Seeing the work presented on stage — in front of the people who will carry this forward into production — was one of the most meaningful moments of my year. The presentation was excellent. Credit belongs to the entire consortium: the airlines who pushed for it, the tech partners who built it, and the standards people who made sure the pieces fit together.
But what struck me most wasn't the polish. It was realizing that an idea many of us have been quietly working on for years — that a traveler's digital identity can live in their wallet and work everywhere — is no longer theoretical. It has a working form. It has airlines that believe in it. And it has a path to production.
I've been contributing to digital identity across a lot of contexts: SD-JWT, ISO 18013, EUDI, wallet libraries. Aviation feels different. Aviation is global by nature — you
can't solve it one country at a time. Which makes contributing to it feel bigger, more fragile, and more consequential, all at once.
After WDS: The OneID Workshop
When WDS wrapped up, a group of us went to the OneID Workshop — IATA's initiative for a seamless, identity-based passenger journey across booking, check-in, bag drop, security, boarding, and border control.
The workshop was one of those rare conversations where everyone in the room is honest about the state of the transition. Not the marketing version — the real version. Where are we? What's working? What isn't? What are the parts that still keep us up at night, technically, operationally, and regulatorily?
I left with more energy than I walked in with. There's so much still to do, and so many thoughtful people doing it.
Looking Forward
Cycle 2 is a milestone, not a destination. The next PoC cycle will bring new challenges: deeper integration with legacy PSS stacks, more diverse wallet ecosystems, harder interoperability edges, and the regulatory alignment needed to move all of this from experimental to operational.
I'm genuinely excited to see where it goes. I'm grateful — to Hopae for the trust, to the IATA team for running a PoC process that actually produces working artifacts,
and to every engineer, product person, and policy contributor I've been lucky enough to work alongside over the past months.
Singapore was the moment this year of quiet work became visible. I can't wait for the next cycle.
