UWI at MWC 2026: The Digital Economy Depends on Trust. So Why Are We Still Building Without It? 

Not a single industry today commands majority trust from its own customers when it comes to handling data. Yet the digital economy every organization is building depends on data flowing freely across partners, platforms, and borders. That growing gap — between digital ambition and digital confidence — was the central tension of the session brought together by NTT DOCOMO GLOBAL and Accenture at Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona. 

Moderated by Ryujiro Nemoto, Senior Vice President at NTT DOCOMO GLOBAL, the discussion featured Hiroki Kuriyama, President and CEO of NTT DOCOMO GLOBAL, and Tejas Patel, Managing Director, Technology Strategy & Advisory, APAC Lead at Accenture, with a recorded address from David Treat, Chief Technology Officer at Pearson. 

Together, they examined why trust is no longer just a technical concern but a strategic one, and what it takes to rebuild it at ecosystem scale through Universal Wallet Infrastructure (UWI). 

The infrastructure enterprises rely on today was built for a very different era. Across multiple clouds, partner platforms, and legacy systems, data volumes are growing faster than the ability to verify them, while fraud, deepfakes, and rising privacy expectations are exposing just how fragile today's trust signals really are. 

Hiroki Kuriyama, President and CEO of NTT DOCOMO GLOBAL, opens the discussion with a clear-eyed assessment of what's breaking and why the organizations moving fastest are the ones rethinking how trust is established from the ground up — not patching the systems they already have. 

When trust starts to fracture, adding another app or platform won't fix the problem. What's missing is a shared foundation, something neutral, interoperable, and built to work across ecosystems rather than within a single one. 

Hiroki Kuriyama explains what UWI is designed to do: provide the shared rails that allow digital identity, money, and objects to be issued, held, and verified across ecosystems — without rebuilding trust each time. 

Infrastructure only matters if it creates tangible value. From an enterprise perspective, the promise of UWI is operational as much as it is strategic — touching everything from compliance costs and partner onboarding to the quality of data feeding into AI systems. 

Tejas Patel, Managing Director, Technology Strategy & Advisory, APAC Lead at Accenture, makes the case for how a shift to verifiable, user-consented credentials changes business models in practice, and why cleaner, trusted data is becoming the foundation enterprises need to power their AI strategies. 

Of all the shifts discussed during the session, the changing role of digital identity may be the most consequential for business leaders, and the most underestimated. 

Tejas Patel explores why the fragmented identity stacks most enterprises are running today are quietly becoming a ceiling on growth, and what it looks like to replace them with something built to scale. 

As skills evolve and careers become more fluid, both individuals and employers are navigating a system built on outdated records and repeated manual checks — a problem that compounds the larger the organization and the more borders it operates across. 

In a first public announcement at MWC 2026, David Treat, Chief Technology Officer at Pearson, reveals how NTT DOCOMO GLOBAL, Accenture, and Pearson have launched a live pilot in Japan built on Universal Wallet Infrastructure — and what it means for how organizations think about skills verification going forward. 

For leaders watching this shift unfold, the question is practical: where does an organization actually start?

In the closing moments of the discussion, Hiroki Kuriyama outlines a clear, phased approach – starting with identity, then extending to money and objects – and explains why cross-partner use cases are critical from day one.

The session at MWC 2026 made one thing clear: trust is no longer something organizations can build in isolation or treat as an afterthought. As digital ecosystems expand, AI becomes embedded in critical workflows, and people and value move more fluidly across borders, trust itself needs to become shared infrastructure — verifiable, interoperable, and built to scale.

That is what UWI is designed to provide — shared rails for identity, money, and digital objects to move securely across organizations, without rebuilding trust each time. The Pearson pilot shows that this is no longer theoretical. It is live, it is building toward results, and it is laying the groundwork for what comes next.

For business leaders ready to explore what a pilot could look like for their organization, UWI is the place to start.