By Jim Lundy
(Aragon Research) – We attended our fifth DocuSign Momentum event last week in San Francisco. The event was larger and as such, it moved to a larger hotel—the Hilton at Union Square.
Momentum featured the transition to a new CEO Dan Springer, who joined DocuSign in January, as well as a robust number of customer success stories, both in the keynotes and in other panels.
The big story that we walked away from Momentum was the shipment of DocuSign Payments. To us, this capability represents the next chapter in Digital Transaction Management (DTM).
DocuSign Payments: A Game Changer in DTM
Even though DocuSign announced Payments last fall, buyers tend to pay more attention to a new capability once it is available. While many firms in many industries are still just now beginning to deploy DTM, with the addition of payments, their options and use cases just got greater.
DocuSign Payments, in its initial form, allows a signer to sign a document in the same manner as before, but now they can also make a payment as part of that single transaction. While subtle, the ability to execute a contract and collect payment at the same time eliminates a huge hurdle to completing a transaction in markets such as real estate rentals.
DocuSign Payments Is Ideal for Real Estate Rentals
In the part of the real estate market called rentals, payment collection, particularly the initial rent payment that also includes the security deposit, is crucial to completing that initial transaction. For the most part, it has been a two-step process. The contract is signed and then payment is made, often with a certified or cashier’s check.
However, there was often a time lapse in completing the transaction because the renter had to go to their bank, get a cashier’s check, and then FedEx or hand deliver the check to the landlord. With DocuSign Payments, all of that can be done electronically. Aragon expects that given the huge impact this capability will have on markets like apartment rentals, DTM payments will become a standard capability by the end of 2018.
One-time vs. Recurring Payments
DocuSign’s initial capability is integration with Stripe and while today, it only supports one-time payments, in the future, the ability to support recurring payments means that many more ecommerce transactions can automatically be part of the initial contract signing.
What’s the Impact on Other DTM Providers?
While DocuSign is not the only DTM provider to offer payments—Sertifi also offers this capability—the majority of DTM providers do not. Ecommerce is not easy to implement but DocuSign just made it very simple and fast to set up and offer. If they want to compete, other DTM providers will now be forced to follow suit.
The bottom line is that DTM is a growing market and with payments, DocuSign just changed the game.