What are digital credentials?
A plain-language guide to digital badges, Open Badges 3.0, verifiable credentials, micro-credentials, decentralized identifiers, and the EUDI Wallet — and how they fit together.
Last reviewed: October 2026 · Maintained by ICoBC
What is a digital credential?
A digital credential is a digital record that someone has achieved something — a qualification, a skill, a membership, or a licence — issued by an organization that others can check. Unlike a PDF certificate, a well-designed digital credential carries machine-readable information about the issuer, the achievement, and how it was assessed, and it can be verified online.
What is a digital badge?
A digital badge is a digital credential with a visual image and embedded metadata: who issued it, what was achieved, the criteria, and often evidence. Badges are shared on profiles, websites, and in wallets, and they make smaller achievements — including non-formal and informal learning — visible.
What is Open Badges 3.0?
Open Badges is the open technical standard for digital badges, originally developed by the Mozilla Foundation and now maintained by 1EdTech. Version 3.0 aligns Open Badges with the W3C Verifiable Credentials data model, so badges can be cryptographically verified and stored in digital wallets.
What is a verifiable credential?
A verifiable credential (VC) follows a W3C standard data model for tamper-evident digital credentials. It involves three roles: the issuer who signs the credential, the holder who keeps it (for example in a wallet), and the verifier who checks the signature, issuer, and status without needing to contact the issuer directly.
What is a micro-credential?
A micro-credential records the learning outcomes someone has achieved after a small volume of learning, assessed against transparent criteria. The European Union adopted a Council Recommendation on a European approach to micro-credentials in 2022, and UNESCO published work towards a common definition in the same year.
What is a decentralized identifier (DID)?
A decentralized identifier is a W3C-standardized identifier that its controller can create and manage without a central registry. DIDs let issuers and holders of credentials prove control of keys, which supports verification without a single gatekeeper.
What is the EUDI Wallet?
The European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet is introduced by the revised eIDAS Regulation (EU) 2024/1183. EU Member States must make wallets available to citizens, which can hold identity data and electronic attestations — including educational and professional credentials — and share them selectively.
How are digital badges, micro-credentials, and verifiable credentials related?
They describe different layers. A micro-credential describes the size and recognition of a learning achievement. A digital badge is a way to represent and share an achievement. A verifiable credential is the technical format that makes the record tamper-evident and machine-verifiable. An Open Badge 3.0 can be a micro-credential packaged as a verifiable credential.
How does ICoBC assess the quality of digital credentials?
ICoBC awards the Global Seal of Quality to credentialing programs that pass an independent review against the VRITE standard: Value, Rigor, Impact, Trustworthiness, and Experience.
Credits, degrees, and stackability
Credentials are related to, but not limited to, credits. In the European Higher Education Area, the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) assigns 60 credits to a full-time academic year; a bachelor’s degree typically requires 180 to 240 ECTS. The Bologna process made two principles mainstream that digital credentials build on: stackability — smaller units add up to larger qualifications — and mobility — recognition across institutions and countries. In North America, Continuing Education Units play a comparable role in professional certification.
A practical example
A truck driver holds two credentials in a wallet: a driving licence from a public authority and a certificate for transporting dangerous goods from a training provider. Together they prove a capability that matters to an employer. With verifiable credentials, the employer can check both instantly, and the driver decides what to share — without handing over more personal data than needed.