Verifiable Contracting: A Use Case for Onboarding and Contract Offering in Financial Services with eIDAS and Verifiable Credentials

This work explores the combined use of eIDAS-compliant electronic identification (eID) and W3C Verifiable Credentials to strengthen remote digital onboarding and electronic contracting processes in financial services. We present a proof-of-concept implementation based on SAML 2.0 authentication and federated identity mechanisms, showing how high-assurance identity verification can be achieved during the contract offering phase. The proposed architecture increases trust for the Contracting Service Provider by ensuring stronger identity guarantees, improved credential validation, and enhanced security in cross-border onboarding scenarios. Our results highlight how eIDAS identities and Verifiable Credentials can be integrated to support secure, interoperable, and regulation-aligned digital onboarding workflows.