The Digital Product Passport becomes mandatory category by category, with the first deadlines in 2027. A DPP platform is not a QR code generator: it is the infrastructure that creates, validates, publishes and keeps your passports reachable for the product's whole lifetime. Here are the five building blocks it must cover, and the six questions to ask any provider.
digital product passports deployed
brands
regulations covered by a single engine
SOC 2 Type II · GS1 partner · AFNOR member · legal archiving with Arkhineo (Docaposte, NF Z42-013) · co-leader of ABI Research's ranking of DPP providers (2024).
An incomplete platform gets paid for twice: once on purchase, and again when it has to be replaced at the first delegated act its data model cannot absorb.
Every product carries a unique identifier at the granularity its category requires (model, batch or item), reachable from a data carrier — QR code, NFC or RFID. Standard EN 18219 requires a resolvable, globally unique URL: it is the entry point to everything else.
The consumer-facing portal →Mandatory data differs by product category and is set by delegated act. A DPP platform has to model those schemas, version them as the rules evolve, and absorb heterogeneous sources — ERP, PIM, PLM, supplier spreadsheets.
The management back office →Publishing an incomplete passport exposes you to market withdrawal. Completeness and consistency checks must run automatically and before publication, with evidence of what was published, when, and by whom.
The compliance engine →Consumers, repairers, recyclers, logistics partners and market surveillance authorities do not see the same data. The Commission's JRC145830 report describes a five-tier model, role-based and need-to-know: your industrial data stays yours.
The five-tier access model →The passport must stay reachable for the product's entire lifetime — often longer than any software contract. That requires integration APIs, registration with the EU registry, and a portability guarantee if you change provider.
The enterprise APIs →Usable as-is in a procurement process. Arianee's answers sit alongside — they commit our architecture, not just our sales pitch.
The ESPR does not stand alone: the Battery Pass, the WEEE Directive, the French AGEC law and the CSRD often apply to the same products. Single-regulation tooling gets replaced at the next delegated act.
One compliance engine for the ESPR, Battery Pass, WEEE and AGEC, with versioned schemas.
A passport hosted inside a closed system disappears with the contract. Persistence beyond the issuer is explicitly addressed by the CEN/CENELEC JTC 24 standards.
Open infrastructure, portable data, decentralised identifiers: the passport outlives the provider relationship.
Provider governance becomes an industrial risk once your passports have to live for ten or fifteen years.
The protocol is governed by the Arianee Association, a non-profit body: no single shareholder, no possibility of acquisition, auditable code.
Creating a hundred passports by hand is trivial; creating thirty thousand a year with clean data is not. Retrofitting products already on the market is a project of its own.
Batch publishing, retroactive passports, ERP/PIM connectors. 3.4M+ passports in production since 2018.
Composition, suppliers and costs should never become public simply because a transparency obligation exists.
Role-based access rights, legal archiving with Arkhineo (Docaposte, NF Z42-013), SOC 2 Type II certification.
The DPP is a touchpoint your end customer actually scans. Treating it as a compliance checkbox means funding an obligation with no return.
Direct customer relationship, digital warranty, authenticated resale, unit-level sell-out measurement.
The same product data feeds different obligations. Handling it in a single repository avoids running the whole project again at every deadline.
The general DPP framework. The EU registry has been live since 20 July 2026 and its operating rules apply since 6 August 2026 (implementing regulation 2026/1778).
Regulation details →Traction, industrial and electric-vehicle batteries. The nearest and most detailed deadline to date.
Regulation details →Electrical and electronic equipment: collection, repairability, end-of-life treatment.
Regulation details →French environmental disclosure obligations and sustainability reporting, both drawing on the same product data.
Regulation details →Six of the eight European standards from CEN/CENELEC JTC 24 have been published as EN:2026 standards since 27 May 2026; two remain final drafts under formal vote. A published standard does not confer presumption of conformity until it is cited in the Official Journal of the European Union — see the EU registry and its timeline.
The gap between a demo and a production rollout shows up in the installed base, retroactivity and support. These deployments are public.
Producer responsibility organisation and retailer: repairability passport across an appliance fleet.
Watchmaking: item-level passport, digital warranty and authenticated resale.
Textiles: product identity and a direct customer relationship from the scan.
Watchmaking: service history and lifecycle traceability.
Fragrance and fashion: customer activation from the passport.
Product passport and proof of authenticity in selective distribution.
A DPP platform is the software that creates, validates, publishes and keeps Digital Product Passports reachable. It brings together five building blocks: a unique resolvable identifier carried by a QR code, NFC or RFID tag; a data repository structured against the regulatory schemas; a compliance validation engine that runs before publication; role-based access rights; and APIs that handle integration and keep the passport available for the product's whole lifetime.
At scale, three capabilities separate real platforms from pilots: batch publishing through an API (thousands of passports per request rather than manual entry), connectors into the systems that already hold your product data (ERP, PIM, PLM), and retroactive creation for products already on the market. Ask any provider for the volume actually running in production, not the theoretical limit. Arianee has 3.4M+ passports in production for 50+ brands, and is co-leader of ABI Research's ranking of DPP providers.
The first obligations land in 2027, starting with batteries on 18 February 2027. The lead time to plan for is not the software but the data: structuring a complete, consistent product repository out of an ERP, a PIM and supplier files typically takes six to ten months. Since the EU registry went live in July 2026, testing is possible today.
A QR code is only a data carrier: it points at an address. A DPP additionally requires a unique, globally resolvable identifier, a mandatory data set defined by delegated act, a compliance check before the product is placed on the market, differentiated access depending on who is looking, and registration with the EU central registry. A QR code linking to a product page satisfies none of these.
Six questions actually discriminate between offers: does it cover several regulations or just one; what happens to the passport if you switch providers; could the provider be acquired by a competitor; does it hold up at the volume and retroactivity your catalogue demands; is sensitive data partitioned by role; and does the passport create value beyond compliance. The CEN/CENELEC JTC 24 standards explicitly raise the persistence and interoperability questions.
No. Six of the eight European standards from JTC 24 have been published as EN:2026 standards since 27 May 2026; two remain final drafts under formal vote. One caveat: a published standard does not confer presumption of conformity until it is cited in the Official Journal of the European Union. The technical foundations — identifier, data carrier, API, storage, security — are nonetheless stable enough to build on today.
More questions about the DPP? The full FAQ or the EU DPP guide.
Thirty minutes is enough to place your catalogue, your regulatory deadlines and the state of your product data — and to say whether our infrastructure is the right call for you.