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What does it really take for a nation to jump from fragmented, paper-based services to 80% digital identity adoption in under two years?

In this episode of The SSI Orbit Podcast, host Mathieu Glaude sits down with Pallavi Sharma, Lead of Marketing & Communications for Bhutan’s National Digital Identity (NDI) program, to unpack one of the world’s most successful national-scale identity rollouts.

This conversation is both inspiring and deeply practical. Pallavi shares how Bhutan transitioned from piloting verifiable credentials in 2023 to achieving widespread adoption across banks, telecom companies, insurance providers, and other sectors. She outlines the political, cultural, and technical conditions that enabled rapid progress, conditions that other countries and digital-identity implementers can learn from, regardless of scale or region.

You’ll hear how Bhutan balanced decentralization principles with real-world user expectations, why their messaging strategy had to shift dramatically, and how features like self-attested photos, digital signatures, and even P2P chat unexpectedly drove massive user growth. Pallavi also outlines their future roadmap, from cross-border interoperability testing with India’s Digi Yatra, to biometrics-backed e-voting, to long-term ambitions for blockchain-based asset tokenization and CBDC integration.

Key Insights

• Bhutan achieved 80% national digital identity adoption in two years by integrating public services, banks, telcos, and private providers into a unified ecosystem.
• Strong backing from His Majesty the King and regulatory bodies enabled frictionless adoption and minimized political pushback.
• Users cared far more about seamless access than decentralization, privacy, or SSI principles, leading to a shift in messaging from “consent” to “convenience.”
• Offering remote onboarding, self-attested passport photos, digital signatures, and passwordless login enabled banks to scale eKYC rapidly.
• Even small features like P2P chat spiked adoption, showing that familiar, high-value use cases matter more than SSI theory.
• A centralized trust registry governs issuers/verifiers today, but the platform is expanding to include health, credit bureau, and employee credentials.
• Bhutan is testing cross-border interoperability with India’s DigiYatra and expanding support for multi-blockchain issuance (Polygon + Ethereum).
• The government sees value in Web3: exploration of CBDCs, NFTs, crypto payments, and blockchain-backed land tokenization.
• Inclusion remains core: cloud wallets for non-smartphone users, guardian features for children, voice & dual language support, and bio-crypto QR codes.
• Future vision: enabling high-stakes digital processes such as e-voting, land transactions, insurance claims, and remote verification using biometrics.

Strategies

• Regulator-first alignment: Work closely with central banks, telecom authorities, and government agencies to ensure legal backing for digital credentials.
• Start simple (passwordless login): Begin with a universally valuable feature, then expand into more sophisticated credential issuance.
• Co-design with service providers: Analyze business workflows to identify credential gaps and add features (e.g., live-verified photos, e-signatures).
• Use mandatory government services as onboarding channels: Services like marriage certificates or police clearances drive mass citizen adoption.
• Promote use-case messaging rather than technical messaging: Highlight convenience (“open a bank account from home”) rather than decentralization.
• Introduce features that mimic familiar behaviors: P2P chat drove major user uptake by offering an intuitive, everyday-use function.
• Leverage biometrics for high-trust actions: Face-search, liveness checks, and crypto-QR codes enable secure remote workflows for future use cases.