The Belgian fintech startup Sign2Pay has made it possible to sign directly on smartphone screens. Launched at TechCrunch in London it could be a windfall for ecommerce.
It just takes a signature (right on one’s own smartphone) to make a transaction. This is the idea for mobile commerce that has been proposed by the FinTech startup Sign2Pay. The solution was presented at TechCrunch Disrupt Conference in London and the founders of the young Belgian company assure that it will help greatly increase the conversion rate at the moment of acquisition.
Sign2Pay permits shopping online with a debit directly from one’s bank account by authorizing the transaction with a signature made on one’s smartphone screen. The solution makes signature authentication in real time using many more variables than that used for traditional PIN or passwords.
The system is compatible with 3,700 European banks and can be used at participating shops, which could witness a decrease in uncompleted acquisitions at checkouts thanks to greater trust as well as the simplicity of a payment that does not require any PIN or passwords to be used.
At the moment, the percentage of unique visitors who have completed a desired operation when visiting a website (conversion rate) is 60% lower on smartphones in respect to desktops and PC’s, and tablets are 30% lower than PC’s. However, mobile phone traffic makes up almost 40% of total traffic. This means that, though there are more clicks, less acquisitions are made with a mobile phone. The gap is destined to increase and for this reason it is opportune for merchants to start fine-tuning checkout solutions optimized for mobile phones and tablets. The real time signature could be a truly competitive (and complementary) solution compared to other biometric solutions that require additional hardware to support them.
