The crucial milestones of France’s digital identity journey have resulted from a long history of failure and half-baked developments, demonstrating the real timeline it takes to build a working wallet from a modest state of digitalisation. Whilst the race to meet the deadline for EU Digital IDs has produced notable front-runners such as Estonia. France is involved in the largest consortium for digital IDs, working through the wallet’s interoperability with existing infrastructure and cross-border to facilitate six services – e-government services, phone lines, driving licences, rental cars, remote electronic signatures, and e-subscriptions.