There is No Better Time than the Present to start e-Signing!

July 21st, 2009

Gartner Analysts Gregg Kreizman and Carsten Casper published on July 17^th 2009 (ID Number: G00168605) some insights about the digital signature market which are the basis of this article.

The European Union (EU) Directive 1999/93/EC on e-signature has been in force since 2000, but it has not brought the intended uptake due to differences in national legislation and implementations.

Germany is aiming for the most stringent card security standards — electronic identity cards are now targeted for rollout starting only at the end of 2010.
Some EU countries such as Belgium and Spain have started to issue electronic identity cards that also contain keys for use in digital signature applications.
Italy takes an approach where each jurisdiction issues its own cards and certificates.
However, few of the currently 9 EU countries that have included or plan to include keys for digital signatures on electronic identity cards have made digital signature usage mandatory. In most countries, the card itself is optional (as in Austria), or the digital certificate on the card is optional. The certificate has to be activated or downloaded, which requires an additional action from the citizen and in some countries an additional fee. Furthermore, a critical mass of card reader infrastructure is still lacking across Europe. Hence, application providers must not assume that a critical mass of citizens in a country is able to create a digital signature.

Moreover, application demand remains low. High-value transactions of citizens occur rarely (such as buying a house or renewing a passport) and usually justify the effort of a physical presence for a signature, whereas low-value transactions (buying books or filing taxes), which citizens prefer to conduct online, do not justify the cost of a smart card infrastructure.

Despite all these obstacles, we recommend companies to start embedding handwritten electronic signature solutions at point of sales or service today. This initiative has many business advantages including reduced cost, increased security, improved customer satisfaction and increasing revenue. The fact that customers are used to signing with their handwritten signature makes this solution an intuitive one and facilitates its integration process. Therefore business will highly benefit from starting this project today and not stipulate it on when and how many citizens have which type of smart-cards.