VRSN, E-Sigs=Coin:
September 28, 2000 1:16pm
Making money from e-signatures
By Richard Shim ZDNet News
When the Electronic Signature in Global and National Commerce Act becomes law on Sunday, "it won't have an earthquake effect" on the market said Bob Pratt, director of product marketing for digital signature technology provider VeriSign Inc.
But it will complete the one part of the electronic relationship with the customer that has been missing.
Online deals have been going on for years, but certain types, such as mortgage closings and stock trading accounts, could not be closed because they needed signatures to be legally binding, said Ben Gould senior VP of marketing for iLumin. The upcoming law will give electronic signatures the same legal standing as their paper-and-pen counterparts.
Several companies that stand to benefit from the law include pioneers Baltimore Technologies, Entrust, RSA Security Inc. and VeriSign. These companies are involved in signing users up to digital certificates and creating programs that authorize and authenticate digital IDs.
"The new law will speed contract execution, allowing for signatures in cyberspace at cyberspeed," said John Megahed, director of research and analysis at PC Data Online. "Beneficiaries will be the Verisign and Entrusts of the world."
Frank Prince, senior analyst at Forrester Research, said the law will be an important enabling step. While the bigger names in the e signature industry will benefit, there is even more potential for firms in vertical markets, he said.
"A lot of fledgling companies will pop up, and most will specialize by industry," predicted analyst James Van Dyke, of Jupiter Communications.
The industries to benefit are health care and financial services, said Van Dyke, because most of the information in those markets is already digital.
Some of those companies are already in the market including eOriginal, which helps users close a mortgage, and ePocrates, which allows doctors to sign prescriptions via wireless communication.
David Thompson, analyst at Meta Group, said financial services will experience benefits from e-signatures before health care because it takes longer for new technology to be taught and accepted in the health care industry.
But the law may not have tremendous effects on the e-commerce market overall, at least initially. Implementation problems and legal challenges will limit the law's impact on e-commerce for at least five years, said analyst Prince in a report. |
