vLEI - Verifiable Legal Entity Identifiers
vLEI - trusted identity & representation rights
The verifiable Legal Entity Identifier (vLEI) extends the trusted global LEI system into the digital world by enabling organisations to prove who they are, and who is authorised to act on their behalf, in a cryptographically verifiable way. The vLEI links an organisation’s verified identity to digital credentials that can be presented securely to enable trusted interactions across payments, compliance, trade, and emerging digital identity ecosystems.
Ready to explore the vLEI opportunity?
RapidLEI, the world’s largest GLEIF-accredited LEI Issuer, is both a candidate Qualified vLEI Issuer (QVI) and partners with a number of QVIs to support innovation in a broad range of industries and use cases including financial, telco, trade finance, supply chain and compliance.
We invite developers, early adopters, innovators to contribute to POCs and the vLEI community.
Cryptographic Verification
Machine-verifiable trust with no API dependency.
Interoperable and Automated
Based on W3C Verifiable Credentials and DIDs.
Immutable Provenance
Anchored to LEI and GLEIF governance.
Role-based Verifiable Credentials
Verifies and asserts the entity and the person’s role and their rights.
Helping realise the vLEI opportunity
The vLEI brings a unique, scalable solution to many problems associated with enabling true identity management.
Automated KYB / KYC
vLEIs enable instant, cryptographically verifiable identification of legal entities and their authorised representatives, streamlining onboarding and compliance processes. By embedding vLEI verification into KYB/KYC workflows, organisations can reduce manual checks, accelerate approval times, and ensure global interoperability with trusted identity standards.
Digital Signatures & Authorisation
With vLEIs, digital signatures can be tied not just to individuals, but to their verified roles within legal entities. This ensures that signatories are authorised to act on behalf of their organisation, improving trust in digital agreements, automating document workflows, and supporting regulatory requirements like EU Digital Identity (EUDI) and ISO-compliant trust frameworks.
Smart Contracts & Blockchain Integrations
Smart contracts can leverage vLEIs to verify the off-chain legal identity and role of interacting parties before executing on-chain actions. This bridges the gap between decentralised systems and real-world legal accountability, making it possible to build compliant, entity-aware distributed apps in finance, governance, and digital commerce.
Supply Chain & Trade Credentials
vLEIs provide a globally recognised and standardised digital identity for every entity in a supply chain, from manufacturers to logistics providers. This reduces fraud, improves transparency, and enables automation of trade processes such as electronic bills of lading, ESG attestations, and customs declarations across borders.
RegTech & Financial Reporting Automation
Integrating vLEIs into compliance and reporting platforms allows for automated validation of entity identity and role-based responsibilities. This supports regulatory initiatives such as FATF Recommendation 24, MiCA, and AML directives by enabling trusted, machine-readable reporting with full auditability and reduced manual intervention.
Credential Registries & Identity Wallets
vLEIs can be seamlessly integrated into digital identity wallets and verifiable credential registries, allowing legal entities to manage and present their credentials in secure, standardised formats. This supports emerging digital trust ecosystems, including the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet and cross-border credential exchange infrastructures.
Understanding vlei
The vLEI Credential chain of trust
GLEIF asserts that the LEI is the ideal foundation on which to establish a chain of trust for organisational identity.
vLEIs are based on the Trust over IP Authentic Chained Data Container (ACDC) specification, based on the Key Event Receipt Infrastructure (KERI) protocol (an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) draft specification), which is a more secure, enhanced variant of the W3C Verifiable Credential specification.
By combining three concepts – the organisation’s identity, represented by the LEI, a person’s identity represented by their legal name, and the role that the person plays for the legal entity, vLEI credentials can be issued and become part of organisational wallets.
Once obtained, the vLEI can be used as a basis to issue additional credentials to confirm roles and rights to members of the organisation.
- GLEIF is the Root of Trust
- Verifiable Credentials are created by QVIs
- QVIs and LEI Issuers assert information about a Legal Entity and its Representatives and Roles
- QVIs cryptographically signs the credential with its private key
Organisations, people & their Roles
vLEI Credentials - Roles and Rights
vLEI Role Credentials are issued by Legal Entities to Persons to assert their official roles and to represent Legal Entities (ISO 5009). Individuals and roles can be verified both by the Legal Entity as well as against one or more public sources.
vLEI Roles can also cover roles individuals are authorized to perform on behalf of the legal entity.
- Legal Entity – Other Employees
- Hospital/Physician’s practice – Patients
- Trusted Supplier, provider, registered member
Two further verifiable credentials are defined that allow information on people associated with the organisation.
Official Organisation Role” credential (OOR) – the OOR links an individual with an organisation in a well-known role. With an OOR credential an individual is able to present themselves as holding an official role for a given organisation, and all the claims presented can be electronically verified in real time.
Engagement Context Role credential (ECR) – the ECR issupports a custom role. For example, “customer of”, “supplier to”, “contractor for”.
Explore more vLEI resources
GLEIF eBook
Explains the verifiable LEI (vLEI) ecosystem enabling instant, automated trust between organisations and their representatives.
Framework
The Framework provides essential detail on the governance structures and processes that will shape the development of the vLEI ecosystem.
Technical Deep Dive
Explore the vLEI and KERI (Key Event Receipt Infrastructure). KERI is the foundational technology that vLEI is built on.