EMVCo is a co-organiser of the Global Digital Collaboration Conference 2026, taking place in Geneva, Switzerland from 01-03 September. In this post, Arman Aygen, EMVCo Director of Technology, explains how the event will help to foster industry exchanges on the key technologies and trends shaping digital identity and payments – and why EMVCo Associates should get involved.
As the use of digital wallets and credentials becomes part of everyday life, advancing the development of secure, interoperable and scalable digital infrastructure is a key priority.
The Global Digital Collaboration (GDC) Conference was established in 2025 to support this need by promoting collaboration across borders and sectors. The event is co-organised by a broad coalition of intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations – including standard development organisations, technical bodies and industry associations – that directly shape the agenda.
As a co-organiser for 2026, EMVCo will be exploring how emerging digital identity technologies can promote trusted and convenient card-based payments for billions of consumers and businesses worldwide. Key topics include:
- Defining a Digital Payment Credential
With verifiable digital credentials (VDCs) gaining traction across digital identity ecosystems to promote security, privacy and convenience, EMVCo is defining a Digital Payment Credential (DPC) that represents a payment-specific application of VDCs for online payments to support secure, privacy-preserving and scalable payment authentication across ecosystems. EMVCo is also investigating functionality to support payment initiation.
- Supporting trusted card-based agentic payments
Agentic commerce is rapidly reshaping the way consumers engage in online shopping and redefining traditional ecosystem roles and actors. In many emerging agentic payment scenarios, artificial intelligence (AI) agents can act on behalf of consumers – making decisions and initiating transactions. This is why EMVCo is working on how global specifications can support innovation in agentic card-based payment solutions. Initial focus areas include analysing card-based agentic payment use-cases and considerations – such as consumer intent, trust in agent-initiated transactions and privacy-preserving interaction models.
- Promoting digital wallet interoperability
More broadly, emerging digital identity initiatives across the world such as the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet and mobile driver’s licenses (mDL) are highlighting the need for interoperability across different wallet ecosystems to support key use-cases – including card-based payments.
How to participate in GDC 2026
While EMVCo is already engaging extensively on these initiatives and topics with EMVCo Associates, Subscribers and industry partners, GDC 2026 provides another important platform to share insights and strengthen collaboration.
In addition, the discussions will be complemented by EMVCo’s industry partners – including the FIDO Alliance, ISO, GlobalPlatform, the OpenWallet Foundation, the OpenID Foundation, W3C and WE BUILD Consortium – who are also participating as co-organisers.
This is why EMVCo is inviting Associates to attend the event and share their input on how emerging digital identity technologies can support trusted and convenient card-based payments. EMVCo has a limited number of free tickets which are available on a first-come, first-served basis
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