A campaign for a product that is not yet live
On 15 September 2026 the Federal Office of Justice (FOJ) published a WTO tender for a national campaign to launch the e-ID and the swiyu wallet ecosystem. The campaign is to run from 2027. Advertising ahead of the product looks premature, since the launch planned for 1 December 2026 was postponed on 30 June 2026. The FOJ said security takes priority. Swissinfo, citing Keystone-SDA, reports that it named malware on end devices and deepfake detection among its concerns, gave no exact introduction date, and expects the trust infrastructure to be operational in the first half of 2027.
The tender is a notable design choice. Switzerland is paying to persuade citizens, not to compel them. That choice is the right one, and the delay supports it.
The strongest case for a mandate
Compulsion has real arguments behind it. A digital identity is a network good. Its value to any one resident depends on how many banks, agencies and retailers accept it, and those parties invest only if users show up. A mandated government app can break that deadlock quickly. It also spreads fixed costs over a larger base. The Swiss Federal Audit Office (SFAO) says roughly CHF 182 million has been approved for development, operation and pilots, and it expects annual operating costs of about CHF 25 million. A system that costly and lightly used would be hard to defend to taxpayers.
Why Switzerland should not take that route
The Swiss mandate was never on offer, and the voters' margin shows why. On 28 September 2025 the people accepted the Federal Act on Electronic Identification Services. Swissinfo's final figures put the yes vote at 50.4%. Parliament had made the e-ID voluntary, and by all accounts a mandate could not have won that vote. A mandatory identity app would have turned a close vote on a voluntary tool into a fight over compulsion.
Voluntariness also changes how the project is judged. A mandated app can ship with weak security and weak design, because users have no alternative. A voluntary one cannot. Citizens who can keep using a paper ID or a physical card will move only if the wallet is safer or easier. A single high-profile breach or privacy scandal would damage uptake far more than any advertising could repair. The compulsion route also invites function creep, where an app needed for one service is quietly required for others. A voluntary design removes that risk.
Delay as a security investment
Postponements usually look like failure, and some of this one is. The SFAO's second audit of the programme, published in February 2026, warned that the final stabilisation phase "could be misused as a time reserve". It recommended protecting that phase in full, "even if it means postponing the introduction of the e-ID". At that point the audit still referred to a launch in the third quarter of 2026 as the earliest possible. Biometric Update reported in June that the adjustments were only partially completed and that the internal federal test phase planned for July was being pushed back.
The FOJ followed the auditors' advice. Slipping a date to fix known security gaps costs a few months. Shipping a flawed national credential costs public trust that is hard to win back, and in a voluntary system that trust is the only thing that drives adoption.
The 4 September 2026 change points the same way. The public beta became a separate swiyu Sandbox Wallet, which keeps developers, banks and other prospective verifiers able to test their integrations without the production wallet. Taking up a voluntary wallet depends on a working ecosystem of places to use it, and the sandbox lets that ecosystem be built before launch.
What the campaign has to do
The 2027 campaign will not work as advertising alone. A credible persuasion strategy has four parts:
- Verifiable security. Publish the results of the hardening work, including what was done about device malware and deepfake risks, so that independent experts can check the claims.
- Real places to use it. Residents adopt a wallet when it saves them time in a concrete setting, such as opening a bank account or proving age. Announcing the wallet before such uses exist would waste the campaign budget.
- No back-door compulsion. Agencies should keep a non-app route for every service. The voluntary promise has to hold in practice and not only in the statute.
- Privacy as the headline. The narrow vote shows that a large share of voters doubted the project. The messaging should answer those doubts directly, not talk past them.
The risk on the other side
The approach has a cost. If trust infrastructure slips again, a campaign running from 2027 could advertise a wallet that is not ready, and a public that has watched two postponements may become more doubtful. The campaign should be tied to delivery milestones and not to a calendar date. A tender can be paused. A damaged reputation cannot.
Switzerland has so far avoided a government app mandate and has paid for it with a slower launch. For a credential meant to be trusted, that is a fair trade. The next test is whether the FOJ keeps security ahead of schedule when the 2027 campaign puts pressure on it to ship.