Why Biometrics Beat Standard E-Signatures

E-signatures have become the standard for modern business. You've probably signed dozens of them this year alone for contracts, agreements, disclosures. They're fast, they're convenient, and they're legally recognised.

But are they secure?

The E-Signature Boom

The Caribbean business community has embraced e-signatures hard. Real estate agents all over, use them to close deals with buyers even in the diaspora. Companies across Jamaica and the region use them for employee onboarding. The audit trail, timestamps, and email records all add up to a legally binding signature.

It's a massive improvement over the old way of printing, signing, scanning, emailing. Nobody wants to go back to that nightmare.

The Weak Link

Here's the problem nobody talks about: standard e-signatures don't actually prove who clicked the button.

Think about it. Your client receives a signing link via email. They click it, they check a box and then click "sign". The platform records the email address, IP-based location, and timestamp. Great! Except... what if someone else had access to that email? What if they forwarded the link to an assistant? What if their account was compromised?

You have a signature, you have an audit trail, but you don't have identity verification.

In most situations, this is fine. People don't generally dispute their own signatures. But when they do, in court, in arbitration, or when money's on the line, that lack of identity proof becomes your liability.

Biometric Protection with Real-Time Identity Verification

This is where biometric signatures come in. Instead of relying solely on email access and digital trails, you add an identity verification layer: face scan matched to government ID, live presence detection to prevent spoofing, and biometric data embedded into the final document.

Now when someone signs, you're not just trusting that they are who they say they are. You know exactly who signed, because they had to prove it in real time, with their face and their ID.

Who Benefits from Biometric Digital Signatures?

If you're handling high-value contracts such as property sales, corporate agreements, loan documents, this matters 100% of the time. Realtors closing deals worth millions of dollars don't want to find out six months later that the "buyer" who signed was actually someone else. Lawyers don't want to defend a contract where identity is in question.

Biometric verification is the difference between hoping a signature holds up and knowing it will.

Make the Upgrade

E-signatures got us 80% of the way there. Biometric signatures close the gap completely. The technology is here, the cost to upgrade is negligible, and the risk of not using it is growing every day.

Cleared™ combines the convenience of e-signatures with biometric identity verification, so you know for sure who signed your documents. Our digital signature certificates are recognised globally, issued through the Adobe Approved Trust List (AATL) and hold up in any court of law.

Sign up now and get free credits to test this combination of document signing with live identity verification, and never question a signature again.