The need for .ID signature

When the world was officially closed down in late March and everyone was ordered to stay at home suddenly new kinds of problems arose, driving demand for new and improved solutions - better video calls, real-time remote collaboration tools, food and grocery deliveries, to name a few.  

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But also the need to sign documents remotely and securely became the issue. I’ve been told that the prime ministers of the EU countries were unable to sign any documents for weeks, as there is no pan-European way to securely verify a person’s identity remotely and thus sign any document digitally in confidence. 

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Oh, I wish they knew about the .ID app. Because this is exactly what we offer - sign documents based on the verified digital identity. It would have been fun!

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Anyway, this year has proven that the world needs to function when the majority of us are just sitting behind the screens at home and never meet face-to-face. We need to improve a lot of areas in life and a securing digital identity is definitely one of them.

2020, so far for .ID

We have been working hard to improve .ID services and make them more user friendly and globally available.

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Here are a few things that we have accomplished this year:

• Integration with Google Docs, so that you can sign documents directly from your favorite online text editor;
• Integration with Google sign-in, so that you don’t need to type in your email address any more;
• Digital identity levels, so that you can easily onboard and see what’s inside the .ID app and verify your identity later;
• Digital signature confirmation sheet on .ID web app, so that you can see the unique digital fingerprints associated with the digital signatures;
• Biometrics support for Android platform;
• Infrastructure improvements to ensure the reliability of our services;
• Full re-branding of Agrello’s solutions under the .ID brand, to simplify the communication with users;
• And a lot of improvements in all of our apps on different platforms.

The user base of .ID app has been growing steadily this year, reaching now 10k. Our biggest growth comes from South-Africa, India and the US. Majority of our users come from the app stores and prefer mobile apps over the desktop experience. The main reasons are that they need to sign documents quickly, or that the mobile phone is their main/only device.

What’s coming next?

In general, we go where our users go. It means that over the second half of the year our primary focus will be on improving our mobile apps. We will continue working on the user experience, more advanced signing and sharing features, and bringing the digital identity more prominently to the app. 

In addition to that, we will also dig deeper into the security of the digital identity as the basis of our services.  And finally, we will integrate blockchain more strongly into our services to provide authenticity, immutability, and transparency to the digital identities created over .ID app. 

So, looking back to the first half of 2020, it’s been quite a ride. But it has also been a good start for .ID and the opening looks good for the second half of the year. Stay tuned and thanks for choosing Agrello electronic signature app!