Payments, Web3 & Identity — What They Share
// W3C DIDs and self-sovereign identity meet payments rails — the new digital verification stack.
By Tony Erwin
Atlanta – December 10, 2025
In the identity and digital verification landscape, two movements have gained significant traction. First, the W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) define interoperable building blocks for self‑sovereign identity, with a focus on individuals. Second, the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) governs the LEI for businesses and organizations to prove digital identity. Several U.S. government agencies and others have endorsed the LEI.
The push toward trusted digital identity took a major step forward this quarter as the LEI system approached and surpassed a milestone of 3 million issued codes, underscoring its role as critical infrastructure for modern finance. LEIs are now used across banking, compliance, trade, and digital commerce. ISO 20022 (Swift’s mandated standard) explicitly includes the LEI as a standard party identifier in payment messages. Verifiable LEIs (vLEIs) are being embedded directly into blockchain workflows—on‑chain wallets, smart contracts, and tokenized assets. This creates opportunities for fintech founders and product teams to build LEI‑aware onboarding, risk, and analytics tools that plug into GLEIF’s open data.
For DIDs in Web3 and blockchain, adoption is extending to authentication technologies across major networks and OAuth 2.0. The move toward decentralization matters because centralized databases pose single points of risk and potential misuse of personal data. Where data is centralized, the risk of hacking and exploitation increases.
Together, LEI and DID developments signal a maturing, standardized identity fabric that supports scalable, data‑driven compliance and lowers operational risk. As digital identity converges with tokenization, programmable money, and real‑time settlement, identity is poised to play a core role in the next generation of financial infrastructure.
Tony Erwin
Co-Founder FutureTechGA and Owner of Skyrocket Financial Solutions LLC.
P.S. Let’s all work together to make Georgia where this tech is built. Forward this to your community that needs to hear this important info.
Source: FSB - Implementation of the Legal Entity Identifier https://www.fsb.org/uploads/P211024-2.pdf
Source: https://www.financialresearch.gov/data/legal-entity-identifier/faqs/