Making Money with Mobile Qualified Electronic Signatures

In 1999 the directive 1999/93/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council was enacted, providing a legal framework for a common introduction of electronic signatures in Europe. So far the signature market has failed miserably. Mobile electronic signatures could be a potential and promising way to increase the market acceptance of electronic signatures. In this contribution we used an infrastructure for qualified mobile electronic signatures proposed in [Ross2004] as the basis of our assumptions. This infrastructure does not require the mobile operator to act as a certificate service provider (CSP). Instead the user can freely choose a CSP and add the signature functionality along with the required certificates later on demand. The mobile operator would act as the card issuer and would only profit from traffic caused by signature applications. However, mobile operators will only enter the signature market if they expect a profit in return. Therefore, we take a look at the economic feasibility of mobile qualified electronic signatures from the viewpoint of a mobile operator (MO) and try to predict the return on investment. Also, the CSP will only accept this infrastructure, by giving up the control over the signature card, if profits can be expected. Therefore, we examine potential revenue sources for CSPs, using new business models proposed in [LiRo2005] that have the potential to be far more successful than the current ones. Our prediction shows that mobile qualified electronic signatures can be quite profitable for both parties.