Over the past 24 years, SK ID Solutions has played a central role in building Estonia’s digital identity infrastructure and e-state. Between 2002 and 2025, we issued a total of 15 million ID Card certificates to a population of approximately 1.4 million people – a scale that reflects how deeply digital identity has become embedded in everyday life in Estonia. As Estonia’s ID card journey continues with a new partner, our long-standing cooperation with the Estonian state as the issuer of ID card certificates has now come to an end, while our role as a digital trust provider for Estonia and Europe continues to grow.

Estonian ID card has been the centrepiece of the ecosystem that made Estonia a global digital success story. The trust infrastructure we maintained enabled citizens to vote online, declare taxes in minutes, and register new businesses in less than 20 minutes. It supports daily life through e-health services for doctors and patients, transparent communication via e-school, and serves as digital proof of health insurance. While the success of Estonia’s e-state relies on legislation, technology, and social trust, reliable digital certificates served as the technical backbone that allowed citizens to access these services securely every day. It has even enabled foreign citizens from 179 countries to become Estonian e-residents and enjoy a seamless digital ecosystem with minimal bureaucracy.

A Planned Transition to International Growth

As of the end of 2025, the issuance and management of ID card certificates in Estonia will be handled by Zetes, a Belgian qualified trust service provider. It is a symbolic move and moment: a Belgian company is now supporting Estonia’s next generation of ID card certificates, while our own Smart-ID universal solution has expanded to Belgium to provide secure authentication and signing for users and e-services there.

While the issuance of new ID cards has moved to this new partner, we continue to validate and support the 2.8 million certificates already in circulation until they expire in November 2030. We also continue to provide Mobile-ID as a national identity document, and Smart-ID, with more than 4 million user base combined, which power authentication and signing across state and private e-services.

This change is part of our long-term strategy to scale the security-focused mindset we built in Estonia to a broader market. The experience we gained from managing a national-level infrastructure is now powering international services that change the lives of millions of people. Our Timestamping service that confirms the existence of data at a specific time, is used globally by large organisations like the European Commission; Smart-ID operates across the Baltics and Belgium, our digital signing services have reached Finland, and our technology also serves citizens in countries as diverse as Iceland, India, and Armenia. This demonstrates that the digital trust models born in Estonia are robust and well suited for the world.

We are thankful for the trust of the Estonian state and all the citizens over the past 24 years. The foundation we built together has served Estonia well and also has paved the way for the next generation of European digital identity solutions.

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