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Before you issue a credential

Before you can issue a credential, you must do the following.

Onboard with GOV.UK One Login

GOV.UK Wallet uses GOV.UK One Login to authenticate users. This process makes sure that credentials are issued into a wallet that is logged in as the same user the credential is for.

You must complete the onboarding process for GOV.UK One Login before you can issue credentials to GOV.UK Wallet. There’s further guidance on onboarding to GOV.UK One Login.

When you complete the GOV.UK One Login onboarding process, make sure you have:

  • requested that the GOV.UK One Login onboarding team activates the wallet_subject_id custom claim for your GOV.UK One Login client - this is a pairwise identifier used to prove that the user logged in to your service and to GOV.UK Wallet are the same user
  • your unique client identifier - this identifier must be included as a claim (client_id) in the pre-authorised code your service generates as part of issuing a GOV.UK Wallet credential offer

Agree a credential template

Your credential template will be created from the following details:

  • the credential type - this must be mdoc
  • the attributes you want to include in the digital credential and its schema
  • the colour of the digital card
  • whether users can have multiple instances of this credential, or only one at a time

Before you can issue a credential, you must confirm these with the GOV.UK Wallet onboarding team. You must also confirm whether you want to use in-app refreshing to let your users refresh credentials when they become invalid.

To integrate with GOV.UK Wallet, you must send the GOV.UK Wallet team your:

  • issuer URL (both integration and production)
  • issuer logo in English and Welsh

Follow relevant standards

When you are preparing to issue a credential to GOV.UK Wallet you must align with open standards.

GOV.UK Wallet supports mdoc-based credentials for the digital driving licence and for any new credentials issued in the future. If you are a government department planning to issue a new credential, it must be in mdoc format.

GOV.UK Wallet follows the OpenID Connect for Verifiable Credential Issuance (OID4VCI) open standard for its issuance flow.

You should also:

To get started, you need to authenticate users with GOV.UK One Login.

This page was last reviewed on 22 April 2026. It needs to be reviewed again on 22 October 2026 by the page owner #di-mobile-wallet-tech-docs .