Spid fee: Aruba and Infocert introduce digital identity fees

Aruba had already decided this in February. Now it is the turn of Infocert. Two of the providers that today offer citizens the Spid electronic identity service will ask for a payment, albeit a small one, thus cancelling free of charge.

Nothing shocking in reality or particularly surprising, given that for private individuals offering Spid the option of requesting citizens' co-participation is provided for in the service's original agreement. The Agency for Digital Italy is responsible for the regulatory aspects of Spid.

It also has to be said that it is a very small slice of Spid users who are affected - with the possibility of not giving consent, thus cancelling the service. About 70 per cent of users are managed by Poste Italiane, which has not announced the end of the free service.

The issue is making noise because all the providers involved have been waiting for a long time for the disbursement of the contribution due to them pro quota of a total fund of 40 million euros that the government had allocated to support management costs. According to some government sources, the funds, after a long wait, should be released by July in time to close the agreement between the executive and the providers for a two-year renewal of the convention (the current one will expire in early October). But it is possible that some of the companies involved have pushed the pedal to the metal to demand an immediate release of resources, also in view of the closing of budgets on 30 June.

Certainly the Department for Digital Transformation of the Palazzo Chigi, which by now makes no secret of its intention to gradually replace Spid with the mass use of the electronic identity card, at the moment has to carefully manage the transitional phase in order to comply with the Pnrr's targe.