OpenID Federation
introduction

OpenID Federation: A Smarter Way to Build Digital Trust

Trust between parties is foundational to digital collaboration and interactions. Yet traditional models for establishing that trust, specifically bilateral integrations or aging SAML-based federations, are no longer fit for today’s interconnected world. That’s where OpenID Federation comes in.

OpenID Federation is a modern, open standard that automates and scales trust across organizational and national boundaries. Instead of building and maintaining dozens of direct connections, participants join a federation governed by shared policies and supervised by one or more authorities which act as trust anchors for that specific ecosystem.

Once inside a federation, they can securely discover and validate one another without needing prior direct agreements.

This transforms how organizations:

• Exchange verifiable data (e.g. customs declarations, credentials, diplomas)
• Establish trust relationships at scale, with minimal manual setup
• Ensure consistent compliance and security, governed by policy

Whether you’re a logistics platform verifying foreign customs data, or an education portal validating international diplomas, OpenID Federation makes it possible to trust new partners, automated, instantly and securely, by validating a cryptographically verifiable trust chain.

Why it matters now

The timing isn’t coincidental. With global adoption of Verifiable Credentials, EUDI Wallets, and protocols like OID4VP and mDL, organizations need a backbone of trust that’s standards-based, interoperable, and automation-ready. OpenID Federation is exactly that.

And because it’s an open standard, you’re never locked into one vendor or platform.