Norway's government has given a clear answer to the question of who should secure its digital identity infrastructure: European technology, built to European standards, by companies that understand what the next decade of digital identity requires.
Digdir, the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency, has awarded its Digital ID-kontroll contract to Commfides Norge AS and Mobai, selecting a Norwegian partnership over international competition. The contract sits at the foundation of how Norwegian citizens receive their government eIDs, placing Mobai's facial biometrics at the core of that process.
What is Digdir and why does this contract matter?
Digdir is the Norwegian government's digital infrastructure agency. It operates ID-porten, the national eID gateway used by 4.6 million people, essentially every adult in Norway. Within that platform sits MinID, the eID Norwegians use daily to access tax records, healthcare appointments, municipal services, and hundreds of public touchpoints.
When a Norwegian citizen logs in to a government service, Digdir's platform is what confirms they are who they claim to be.
MinID currently operates at eIDAS assurance level Substantial, a recognised European standard, but the demands on that infrastructure are only growing. Issuing a digital identity is not just a login problem. It starts with a fundamental question: how do you reliably verify, in a fully digital process, that the person creating an account is genuinely the person they claim to be? That is exactly what this contract addresses.
The Digital ID-kontroll solution combines advanced document verification with facial biometrics to confirm, at the moment of registration, that the person holding the identity document is truly present and truly themselves.
The verdict
Digdir's own assessment of the competitive process was direct:
"Overall, Commfides Norge AS has submitted the best offer in the competition and will be awarded the contract. They score exceptionally well on quality and best on the implementation plan. They have also overall delivered the best price in the competition."
That verdict came after a rigorous procurement process that included international bidders and strong large players.
A partnership built for this
Commfides Norge AS is one of Norway's qualified trust service providers, a certified eID issuer operating at assurance level High, the top tier under Norway's eID framework. As a regulated provider at the intersection of digital identity and enterprise trust services, they bring the compliance foundation this contract requires.
Mobai provides the technology at the core: facial biometrics and identity proofing built for the specific requirements of the European regulatory environment. The hard problems in this space are real ones. Liveness detection, inject attack prevention, face matching under real-world conditions. Our technology handles these at the accuracy levels and under the privacy constraints that European law demands.
Together, the partnership delivers what neither could achieve alone: a regulated, high-trust identity provider with strong document validation and leading biometric technology designed for Norwegian and European public sector requirements.
Built for Europe's identity future
This contract matters beyond Norway's borders. The EU's eIDAS 2.0 regulation is reshaping digital identity across Europe. Every EU and EEA member state, Norway included, is moving toward EU Digital Identity Wallets that will operate at eIDAS level High, enabling citizens to prove identity and share verified attributes across borders and services.
Norway is actively taking part in this transition, and engaging in for instance a driving member of NOBID, an eight-nation Nordic-Baltic consortium pioneering cross-border authentication and identity interoperability.
The technical requirements within the eIDAS 2.0 framework set specific, demanding standards on biometric and identity proofing technology: how face matching must perform, what liveness standards apply, how data must be handled and protected. These are European requirements, designed for European operating environments.
Mobai has built precisely for this. As one of Northern Europe's leading biometrics development environments, our technology is shaped by these frameworks, not retrofitted to meet them. Winning the Digdir Digital ID-kontroll contract is validation that our approach, technically rigorous, privacy-by-design and eIDAS-aligned, is the right one for the public sector use cases that matter most.
What this means going forward
The solution will first serve the issuance of MinID across Norway. The architecture is built to scale. Any organisation requiring secure digital identity verification, whether for eID issuance, KYC processes in financial services, onboarding, or access to sensitive services, can adopt the same foundation.
Brage Strand, CEO Mobai, brage@mobai.bio, +47 40 49 04 11