A recycler in Lyon gets a battery on her bench whose passport was issued in Zürich. She wants to check that the data is genuine, with the tool she already uses. Not with the manufacturer’s software, not with ours. Whether that works is decided neither by the manufacturer nor by Transpareo, but by a set of rules that is being written right now.
That set of rules is the United Nations Transparency Protocol (UNTP) by UN/CEFACT, the emerging global standard for how product passports and checkable proofs are built, signed and checked. It is deliberately lightweight and vendor-neutral: a shared language that binding regimes such as the EU product passport can build on, instead of every country and every vendor inventing its own format.
UNTP has put version 0.7.0 out for public review. Until version 1.0 is released, every person and every organisation can give feedback through an open register. We submitted six notes. Two of them have already drawn a response from the working group, and one changed our own code. This article says what we noted and what it means for your passports.
This should not be confused with the EU consultation we also took part in: that one was about the binding DPP register of the EU Commission. UNTP is the layer beneath, the worldwide technical foundation that the EU register and other regimes can rest on.
Why we help write the global standard
A product passport that only one vendor’s software can read and check is not a passport. It is a silo with a nicer name. The point of a DPP is that a buyer, a recycler or a market-surveillance authority can check the data with any fitting tool, not just with ours. Where exactly that fit is defined is decided in the standard. We would rather help write it than inherit it.
1. Proofs that outlive decades (#678)
The current UNTP profile requires the signature to wrap the document from the outside, like a sealed envelope around a letter. For a passport that has to be archived, mirrored and found again by its fingerprint for ten years, the alternative has clear advantages: a signature that sits inside the document itself. It survives any redistribution, and a fixed way of writing the document (the JSON Canonicalization Scheme, RFC 8785) yields a stable fingerprint for version tracking. We proposed allowing this standard method, the W3C cryptosuite eddsa-jcs-2022, as an equivalent option. Why a passport has to outlive its issuer in the first place, and how signatures make that possible, we explored in the post on signatures and certificates.
This note did not just draw a response, it changed our own verifier. With Transpareo Time Machine 2.0.0 (20 June 2026) we moved from a reduced in-house profile to the standard method. Any tool that speaks the W3C standard can now check a Transpareo passport, not just our own.
We did not merely call for the fit, we shipped it.
In the same note we raised two related points: robust guidance on how long a revocation list must stay reachable, with the option to reconstruct a revocation from the product’s life stages if needed; and the rule that every tool displays the same passport identically, without shipped display instructions.
2. A single algorithm for the whole trust chain (#683)
How a verifier gets from the issuer’s identifier via the issuer register to the certification and on to the production facility is today described in prose spread across several pages, but not as one single procedure. We proposed a step-by-step procedure for the entire trust chain: check the proof, find the issuer in the register, match the conformity criteria, resolve the production facility. Without this one authoritative description, independent tools read the scattered paragraphs differently and reach different verdicts on whether a passport is genuine. This note, too, prompted a response from the working group.
3. Tiered disclosure of a single passport (#679)
A regulated passport has to serve several audiences: the general public, legitimate stakeholders such as recyclers, and authorities each see different slices of the same passport; the EU Battery Regulation requires precisely this. We argued for treating this tiered disclosure as a first-class case, rather than bolting it on afterwards as per-recipient encryption.
4. Multilingual content in the data model itself (#680)
UNTP currently carries human-readable values in a single language. In regulated, multilingual markets that is not enough: a passport valid across the whole EU needs its text in several languages at once. We proposed that a single value carries all of its language versions. Transpareo ships passports in 40 languages today; we feel this gap every day. How we handle this breadth of languages at all we describe in the post on AI translation.
5. Long-term checkability as an architecture question (#681)
Related to the first point, but more fundamental: proofs, issuer identifiers and revocation lists have to stay reachable across a decade, otherwise an old passport can eventually no longer be checked even though it was valid. We asked for guidance on keeping keys, issuer identifiers and revocation lists durably reachable. A question that only arises years later and belongs in the standard today for exactly that reason.
6. A bridge to the EU product passport (#682)
UNTP is deliberately a lightweight passport for trade between businesses. The EU product passport is a binding regime with its own field list. Anyone implementing both needs an explicit mapping between the two: a profile that shows how a UNTP passport fills the mandatory fields of an EU passport. We work at exactly this seam every day, which is why we called for the bridge.
Why we do this
Two of our six notes already have a response, one has moved our verifier to the standard method. That puts us no longer at the edge but in the expert circle of the supply chain working group.
A standard gets better when the people who actually sign and check passports speak up, not only those who write about them.
For our customers this is not an end in itself. The more precise and vendor-neutral the global standard, the safer their investment: their passport data stays exportable and checkable with any tool that speaks the standard. No lock-in, no format that stands or falls with a single provider.
Who wants to take part
The public review is still open. Every submitted point is out in the open on the public UNTP register. The supply chain working group meets regularly by video call; the dates are on the UNTP governance page. Anyone who will issue or check product passports, whether manufacturer, service provider, recycler or authority, should read over the open points at least once. Even a short, technically precise piece of feedback carries weight.
And anyone who wants to check a Transpareo passport independently today can do so with Transpareo Time Machine, since version 2.0.0 with exactly the method we argued for in the UNTP profile.
