Credential Engine has joined Ayra, a global nonprofit network building partnerships for safe, secure, and interoperable digital trust ecosystems. Together, we share a commitment to ensuring credentials can be verified and recognized with confidence across platforms, institutions, and borders.
The partnership brings together complementary approaches to building trustworthy credential infrastructure. Credential Engine’s tools and services, including the recently launched Issuer Identity Registry (IIR), the Credential Registry, and the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL), are grounded in the same principles that are the foundation of Ayra’s global trust network: transparency, interoperability, and verified identity.
“Credential Engine has built a well-governed issuer identity registry, with CTDL providing the foundation for both governance clarity and technical integration. In Ayra’s model, members lead their domain registries, and Ayra coordinates across them so trust recognized in one jurisdiction travels to every other that needs it,” says Darrell O’Donnell, Executive Director of Ayra. “With agentic AI now operating across those same boundaries, the demand for verifiable, cross-ecosystem trust is accelerating faster than any single organization can address alone. That’s why this partnership matters.”
As digital credentials move across systems and jurisdictions, confirming who is authorized to issue them becomes essential. Credential Engine’s IIR provides a verified, machine-readable registry of organizations that issue credentials, helping establish a stronger foundation for interoperable trust. This work aligns closely with Ayra’s Trust Registry Protocol, which enables systems worldwide to perform authorization checks and validate whether an organization is recognized to issue credentials within a given context.
By joining Ayra, Credential Engine is contributing to a global ecosystem where credentials can be trusted and recognized consistently, regardless of where they originate or where they are used. Together, the organizations are working to strengthen the infrastructure needed to support learners, workers, educators, employers, and policymakers across an increasingly connected global credential landscape.
“To realize the full potential of digital credentials, trust and interoperability across borders is key. Joining Ayra enables us to make sure that a credential earned in the United States means something in Germany, and that a worker’s verified skills can travel with them wherever opportunity takes them,” says Jeanne Kitchens, Chief Technology Solutions Officer at Credential Engine. “We are thrilled to be joining a global community advancing the shared infrastructure needed to ensure credentials can be understood, trusted, and recognized across learning and work ecosystems.”
Credential Engine invites credential issuers to register in the Issuer Identity Registry and contribute to a more transparent and interoperable credential ecosystem.
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About Ayra: Ayra is a Switzerland-based global nonprofit that coordinates the infrastructure for digital trust. Ayra enables systems worldwide to verify not just that a credential is technically valid, but that the organization behind it is recognized and authorized. Ayra’s members — spanning credential issuers, technology providers, verifiers, and public interest institutions — build and operate the trust infrastructure across sectors and jurisdictions. As a structurally neutral nonprofit, Ayra coordinates the trust fabric no single organization can build alone. Learn more at ayra.forum.
About Credential Engine: Credential Engine is a non-profit whose mission is to map the credentials, qualifications, and skills landscape with clear information, fueling the creation of resources that empower people to discover and pursue the learning and career pathways that are best for them. Credential Engine provides a suite of web-based services that include the Credential Registry to house up-to-date information about all credentials, skills, and providers, the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL), a common description language to enable credential comparability, and a platform to support customized applications to search and retrieve information about credentials, skills, and providers. Learn more: credentialengine.org.