Digital identity in the UK has reached an important milestone.

The UK Digital Verification Services (DVS) Trust Framework 1.0 is now in effect, creating a clearer statutory framework for organisations providing digital identity and verification services in the UK.

For businesses, this is about much more than proving someone’s identity online. It establishes a trusted infrastructure for verifying people, sharing attributes, managing authority and enabling organisations to rely on digital evidence with greater confidence.

Here is what businesses need to know.

What is the UK Digital Verification Services Trust Framework?

The UK Digital Verification Services Trust Framework is a set of government-defined rules and standards for organisations that provide digital verification services.

Version 1.0 is the first revised statutory trust framework published under the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025.

It establishes requirements covering organisational governance, information security, privacy and data protection, technical standards, identity verification, authentication, accessibility and inclusion, and the management and sharing of verified attributes.

Services can be independently assessed against these requirements and, when the relevant requirements are met, become certified and appear on the government’s Digital Verification Services Register.

What changed with Trust Framework 1.0?

One of the most important developments is that the framework is becoming broader than traditional identity checking.

The supporting standards cover identity, attributes, authentication, delegated authority and the ways verified information can be shared between different parties. Version 1.0 also introduces dedicated requirements for orchestration services and holder services.

This matters because digital trust increasingly involves multiple organisations and systems. A business may need to establish not simply whether a person is who they claim to be, but what has been verified about them, whether they are authorised to perform an action, who verified that information and whether it can be relied upon.

What is the Digital Verification Services Register?

The UK government maintains a statutory register of digital verification services. It allows organisations and individuals to check whether a service has been independently certified against the UK trust framework and whether that certification remains valid.

For organisations buying digital identity technology, this creates a clearer way of identifying providers whose services have undergone recognised independent assessment.

What is UK CertifID?

Alongside Trust Framework 1.0, the government has introduced the UK CertifID trust mark.

Eligible providers whose services are certified against Trust Framework 1.0 and included on the statutory register can use the mark subject to the government’s usage requirements. The intention is to make it easier for organisations and individuals to recognise digital verification services operating within the UK’s trust framework.

Why this matters beyond identity verification

The more interesting development is what trusted digital verification enables once identity has been established.

Consider an organisation onboarding an employee. Traditional systems may separately check identity, Right to Work, professional qualifications, DBS status, employment status, organisational role and system permissions. These checks often exist across different systems and may need to be repeated.

A trusted digital verification ecosystem creates the potential for verified information to move between authorised systems in a more structured and interoperable way. The same principle can apply to customers, contractors, healthcare workers, financial-services users and representatives acting on somebody else’s behalf.

Digital verification and financial services

HM Treasury has published guidance explaining how digital verification services can be used for identity verification checks required under the Money Laundering Regulations.

For these checks, the digital verification service must be included on the government’s register of services certified against the UK DVS Trust Framework. This does not remove a regulated firm’s existing obligations under the Money Laundering Regulations. Instead, it provides a clearer framework for incorporating certified digital verification into customer due-diligence processes.

That could become increasingly important across banking, fintech, accountancy, legal services and other regulated industries.

From identity to attributes

Identity alone is often not enough for a digital transaction. An organisation might need to know whether somebody is over a particular age, holds a specific qualification, has permission to work, occupies a particular organisational role, has passed a required check, or has authority to act for another person.

Trust Framework 1.0 includes supporting guidance covering how attributes can be created, bound to an identity and shared. This allows systems to increasingly answer a more useful question: is this person authorised and qualified to perform this particular action?

Delegated authority is particularly interesting

Trust Framework 1.0 also includes dedicated guidance for determining whether someone has delegated authority.

This matters when one person or organisation needs to act on behalf of another. Examples include a carer acting for a patient, an accountant acting for a company, an employee acting for an employer, a legal representative acting for a client, or an authorised contractor accessing an organisation’s systems.

Digitally establishing both identity and authority could remove considerable friction from services that currently depend on paperwork, manual verification or repeated checks.

What should businesses be thinking about now?

Businesses do not necessarily need to become digital verification service providers themselves. But organisations designing new platforms, customer journeys or workforce systems should increasingly consider how their architecture will interact with trusted digital credentials and verification services.

Key questions include whether systems can consume verified digital attributes, safely reuse identity information, establish authority rather than simply identity, revoke or update permissions, work with multiple credential providers and wallets, and audit verification and authorisation decisions.

These are architecture questions as much as compliance questions.

Digital trust becomes even more important with AI agents

Software is increasingly acting on behalf of people. AI agents can already retrieve information, interact with APIs, update business systems and initiate workflows.

As their capabilities grow, enterprises will need mechanisms for determining not simply who an AI agent belongs to, but what that agent is authorised to access and what actions it can perform.

The same concepts emerging around trusted digital identity become highly relevant: Identity → Credentials → Authority → Policy → Action.

The next generation of digital trust infrastructure may therefore need to establish trust for both humans and the software acting on their behalf.

Building for interoperability

The biggest mistake businesses can make is treating digital identity as another isolated login system.

Digital verification is moving towards interoperable ecosystems where trusted information can be verified and consumed across organisational boundaries.

Systems being designed today should therefore consider interoperability, standards-based credentials, secure attribute exchange, consent, revocation, authentication, delegated authority, auditability, privacy and crypto-agility.

What happens next?

Trust Framework 1.0 represents an important step in the UK’s digital identity infrastructure, but the ecosystem will continue evolving.

For organisations, the opportunity is not simply replacing physical identity documents with digital versions. It is creating systems where trusted information about people, organisations and eventually autonomous software can be verified and acted upon safely.

At WeUno, we design and engineer secure digital platforms across AI, digital identity, credentials and enterprise software. We help organisations build systems where identity, permissions, trusted data and business workflows can work together securely.

As the UK’s digital verification ecosystem develops, organisations designing new digital services should start considering these capabilities as part of their underlying architecture rather than something to bolt on later.