Writing in Business Day – one of South Africa’s prominent newspapers – Impression Signatures managing director Carrie Peter explored the critical question of whether a recognized identity is a human right in the digital realm.
The article – which appeared on the broadsheet’s 25 October 2024 edition – highlighted the major challenges faced by many African countries in providing secure and valid identities, both physical and digital.
Her arguments centered on one bottom-line: digital identity is essential for economic participation and protection and that as digital interactions become increasingly integral to people’s lives, ensuring everyone has a trusted digital identity is not just a necessity but a fundamental human right.
Since taking over the reins at Impressions Signature in 2022, Carrie has helped to create e-signature solutions that have helped many people to protect their identity in a continuously unpredictable and technologically advancing world.
Digital Innovator
Carrie, who has a burning passion for women’s involvement in the technology space, is also a seasoned digital innovator. With a background in technology start-ups, Carrie has built a career in end-to-end digital operations management with a focus on data privacy and security, customer experience, identity security and trust.
From IT big hitters to niche solutions, Carrie has found her groove in scaling local products and believes in the immense potential for home-grown tech solutions to address the unique socio-economic challenges in South Africa.
Born in the busy city of Johannesburg in South Africa, Carrie cannot imagine relocating to anywhere else.
“I cannot leave Johannesburg, the weather is too good and the people are just the best, they have the best energy of anywhere I’ve ever been.
“I was very fortunate in that my parents chose to send me to schools that foster and nurture independence, leadership and out of the box thinking. I then went on the Stellenbosch University, which has a rich history of developing business leaders.
“I am a startup junkie, so after a few years with a stable job at a major systems integrator I moved into working at various startups. I was determined to invest as much as possible in growing my experience and exposing myself to as much problem solving as possible.”
Taking Over
Carrie was appointed managing director of Impression Signatures, largely owing to her expertise in steering companies towards a sustainable growth trajectory.
Her management style and wealth of experience has not only yielded positive results but has given the company a new lease of life that will propel it to realize its full potential.
“I did not establish Impression, my expertise is operationalizing SaaS companies, so I took over at the time when Impression needed to prepare for scaled growth. Recognizing that they needed a different type of management for the next phase of their growth the founders brought me in.
“Impression was started when a large bank in South Africa failed to find an eSigning solution that met both the RSA legislation, and their cyber security requirements. They turned to their cyber security service providers to solve the problem for them – after evaluating the offerings available in the market they concluded that there was in fact a gap.
“Impression began as an API first solution, catering to large volume retail banking signing, and expanded to add additional capabilities from there. We do electronic signing, secure document delivery and identity verification. In January 2025 we also achieved WebTrust Accreditation as a Certificate Authority.”
Changing Landscape
Carrie reveals how the Covid-19 pandemic became a big contributor to changes in the industry’s landscape, pushing more companies to work remotely or strengthen their online presence.
In South Africa, the pandemic led to a lot of voluntary private sector adoption of the company’s solutions to prevent fraud and cybercrime.
“The drive toward paperless environments has driven many companies to use eSignatures. Also, South African consumers become more digitally fluent every day, and with this they come to expect more sophisticated and seamless digital experiences, this has also driven demand for seamlessly integrated solutions like Impression.”
To stay ahead of the curve, Impression Signatures are involved in industry bodies that not only share information about developments in their space but also drive policy at the highest levels.
“We also read, a lot. As a WebTrust Accredited CA we are also mandated to stay up to date on security, standards and compliance changes that effect ourselves and our customers industries, we have monitoring tools, subscriptions and membership at many information sources to ensure that we don’t miss anything.”
Leading from the Front
Carrie is proud to lead a company that enables people to sign with their phones as this is critical to the African operating environment.
“AWS cloud-based infrastructure eliminates the reliance on expensive infrastructure. AWS based infrastructure also allows Impression to offer unparallelled up-time irrespective of any local infrastructure challenges such as electricity outages.
“Being fully South African and owning our own IP ensures that we’re able to offer prices Africa can afford. Our facial biometric signing allows critical agreements to be signed remotely – saving people from having to travel great distances to gain access to banking and other services, while protecting institutions against fraud.”
Confronting Challenges
However, it has not been all smooth sailing for Impression Signatures. The challenges Carrie and her team have faced so far have not only taught them invaluable lessons, but they have also demonstrated their capacity to come up with solutions.
“The most challenging obstacle we have faced as a company was becoming a Certificate Authority in AWS infrastructure, most people believed it was impossible, our team was forced to build something for which there was no roadmap, no existing framework or literature, and none to help guide them.
“The second most important thing we learned was that creating an environment where the team were able to experiment and learn without the awareness that what they were doing was considered impossible, allowed them to find a solution.”
When she is not working to bridge the digital divide and solve for financial inclusion, Carrie can be found managing feeding schemes in Soweto and supporting young female leaders through various organizations.
