Digital Sovereignty: Requirements of Digital Identity Wallets in E-Commerce

Advancing digitization has greatly increased the need for usable and secure identity management solutions in e-commerce. Digital identity wallets offer a promising solution by allowing users to securely store their personal data at one place on their smartphones and share it on demand in a self-determined way. In order to ensure the acceptance of digital identity wallets, the digital sovereignty of various stakeholders must be safeguarded. This not only promotes trust in digital technologies and services, but also protects against misuse and unauthorized access, which is crucial for maintaining privacy and security in the digital world. This article describes the elicitation of requirements in the area of digital sovereignty when integrating digital identity wallets into e-commerce. In particular, the requirements of three stakeholder groups—online shoppers, online shop operators, and intermediaries—were analyzed. For this purpose, the study used the MERDigS method for eliciting requirements in the area of digital sovereignty. As a result, 31 unique requirements through workshops and 16 unique requirements through interviews were elicited and grouped into seven key requirements. In addition, the quality of the method results and the method feasibility were evaluated using various evaluation criteria.