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Products used
Docusign is the global leader in delivering secure and frictionless agreement processes worldwide. With a commitment to strengthening trust in online transactions, Docusign sought an innovative solution to enhance the security and user experience for its customers’ digital identification processes; a key component that underpins any high-trust agreement. Docusign chose Checkout.com’s Identity Verification because it offered the highest levels of trust, inclusion, and UK and EU regulatory compliance across key markets, while minimizing impact on user friction. By integrating Identity Verification into their processes and offerings, Docusign has streamlined user flows, elevated trust, and unlocked new business growth.
"At Docusign, we want to ensure that we can power any type of agreement anywhere around the world and deliver the highest level of trust with the lowest level of friction possible," says Maxime Hambersin, Senior Director of Product Management International at Docusign.
Challenge
Previously, cumbersome video identification processes dominated the market. Verifying a recipient’s identity often took hours, sometimes days as users waited for certified agents to join a live video call. This created friction, drop-off, and poor user experiences, particularly as digital adoption accelerated globally.
"To perform a qualified electronic signature (QES) with the highest level of trust in agreements, our customers used to go through what was known as a video identification process," explains Hambersin. "That was super helpful at the time, but it was not optimal.”
Docusign also wanted to proactively solve a deeper industry issue: the racial and gender bias often found in facial recognition systems. Many AI-based solutions suffered from well-publicized shortcomings that excluded certain populations, reducing trust and increasing frustration.
"It's not acceptable to have a digital identity verification solution that excludes a certain percentage of the population," says Hambersin. “Once more sophisticated AI-powered solutions became available, we needed to select the one that could best support our mission of inclusivity ."
Solution
After reviewing the market, Docusign selected Checkout.com’s Certified Identity Verification (PVID) solution as one of the lead options for customers seeking QES, the highest-trust signature level recognized across the UK and EU. Checkout.com’s solution combines advanced machine learning with asynchronous human review to prevent physical and digital counterfeiting (including deepfakes), reduce operational effort, and cut costs by up to 50%.
“We found that Identity Verification was one of the best solutions for our needs—a partner for the highest level of trust and the utmost level of regulation,” says Hambersin. “Now we are live, we are super happy with the product and partnership.”
Importantly, Checkout.com aligned with Docusign’s commitment to inclusive verification. “Avoiding racial biases in our model is extremely important to us,” explains Checkout.com’s Wyss. “Our machine learning technology has always had human input and is built on diverse, real human data not scraped from the internet which radically improves inclusion.”
A partnership built for continuous improvement
Over the past several years, Docusign and Checkout.com have built a collaboration grounded in trust, transparency, and continuous innovation. Through regular joint sessions covering product development, technical insights, and data reviews, the teams often align roadmaps and proactively anticipate operational needs. They also work closely to stay ahead of regulatory shifts, ensuring seamless compliance as digital ID frameworks continue evolving across the UK and EU .
"Our partnership has proven to be highly successful, grounded in trust, collaboration, and a shared commitment to delivering excellence. By working closely together, we have been able to deliver innovative solutions that directly benefit our customers and their agreement processes, ensuring they benefit from our combined expertise" said Hambersin.
Staying ahead of emerging threats
As identity fraud grows more sophisticated with advanced AI tools, Checkout.com’s verification systems are continuously updated to detect new forms of impersonation and counterfeiting. This ensures that Docusign, and its customers, remain fully protected against advanced fraud attempts while maintaining a frictionless user experience.
Results:
The transition from live video calls to AI-powered, self-service identity verification has transformed the QES user experience for both Docusign and its customers. Adoption has increased significantly, particularly among businesses who were previously hesitant to engage with digital identity solutions.
“This shift has not only enhanced user experiences, but has also opened up new business opportunities, empowering enterprises of all sizes to embrace online transactions with confidence,” says Hambersin.
Exceptional performance at scale
To achieve these strong improvements, both teams invested heavily in technical collaboration. Docusign dedicated product and development resources to the partnership, and on our side we ensured that Checkout’s product and engineering teams were consistently involved to support the integration. This joint effort helped us align quickly on requirements, adapt to evolving needs, and ensure the solution — and its subsequent enhancements - were properly implemented by Docusign and quickly made available to its customers.
As a result:
2024: 95% of committed users received a usable verdict; 94.30% of processed IDVs were usable.
2025: Conversion rose even further, with 96% of committed users receiving a usable verdict and 95.55% usable IDVs among processed cases.
These metrics reflect a system that consistently performs dependably at high volumes, across diverse user populations, and under stringent regulatory conditions.
“[Because of] the move from video to AI, we see a lot of new people willing to use a digital identity that never wanted to do it before. And that includes smaller enterprises who are now comfortable considering it as a way to do business online. People just don't wait. UX and speed are key drivers of any conversion—the better your UX, the more business people will do online,” Hambersin reflects.
