Further information on the consortium:  www.esign-consortium.org

The Mobile Electronic Signature Consortium is an association of companies active in the internet and mobile phone sectors. Its objective is to develop a secure and universal application infrastructure capable of employing mobile digital signatures.

In order to achieve this goal, a large number of well-known companies in the internet and mobile phone industries will define a standard enabling mobile phones and other mobile end devices to be integrated into the existing online landscape. In this way, future services based on mobile digital signatures will offer customers true value added.

The Consortium is a globally orientated association of companies. It will concentrate on defining a worldwide accepted standard

Application Protocol Interface

The Application Protocol Interface (API) is a standardized interface defining communication between Mobile Operator and a Service Provider, e.g. a merchant or a bank. This interface will be developed by the Mobile Electronic Signature Consortium. It is the objective of this Consortium to integrate the mobile digital signature into the e-Commerce world. This generates the basis for the development of applications for the implementation of legally effective business processes. A decisive benefit of the API is the independence of the individual applications, i.e. the API can both be deployed across applications and it reduces the complexity of online applications in e-Commerce.

In the future, deployment of the API will generate real add-on value for all parties involved in online processes: On the one hand, the service provider is able to protect the payment and transaction process by a digital signature, the control of which could be performed by the mobile operator. The end customer enters the mobile phone number via the Internet-PC or the WAP mobile and receives the transaction data via mobile phone. In this way, it is guaranteed that the text to be signed can be checked in the preliminary stages of the business and be signed electronically if correct. Thus, the mobile phone develops into a mobile signing device and is the e-Business enabler of the future.