Smart Wallet — Djibouti's Biometric Mobile Digital ID and Public-Services Wallet

Djibouti's digital transformation drive, framed around its 'Vision 2035' national plan, has included establishing a legal framework for digital identity and electronic signatures to underpin new online public services.

In September 2025, the Djiboutian government signed a memorandum of understanding with Visa and biometric-identity vendor TECH5 to build a national digital wallet, the 'Smart Wallet': TECH5 supplies the biometric/digital-ID security layer (face, iris and fingerprint recognition) and Visa the payments and wallet rails, as part of a broader multi-year Visa–TECH5 digital-public-infrastructure partnership already being deployed in other countries.

On 9 February 2026, at a national forum on digital identification, President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh and Minister of Digital Economy and Innovation Mariam Hamadou Ali unveiled the resulting biometrics-based mobile ID, storable in the Smart Wallet. It lets residents verify their identity via mobile phone and access online public services — including building-permit applications and tax payments — without repeated in-person visits or paper resubmission.

Public documentation to date covers the MoU, the launch event and the intended service scope, not independent usage results: no published figures yet exist on enrolment numbers, processing-time savings or fraud outcomes. Djibouti separately began, also in February 2026, a UN-supported process to define a national AI strategy — indicating that governance and oversight frameworks are still being built alongside deployment rather than ahead of it.

Read the full analysis: https://idtechwire.com/djibouti-partners-with-visa-to-develop-national-digital-wallet/