News
legal & digital

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Most contracts concluded by banking institutions are now signed electronically. And this has many advantages: speed of execution, optimized process and document management, close customer experience... But identity fraud is on the rise in the field of consumer credit, and in four recent cases, the courts of appeal have pointed out some weaknesses in the current procedures.
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In 2025, the electronic signature was often questioned in court, with a clear expansion into the B to B leasing sector, which until now seemed to be spared from litigation in this area. The financial stakes remain low, but the judges have gained experience, which has resulted in refusals to recognise the electronic signature for poorly argued cases. On the dark side, legal actors are unable to distinguish between the elements that characterize a qualified (presumed reliable) and unqualified electronic signature. This is worrying because "real" qualified electronic signatures are beginning to appear on the market and one may wonder whether this difficulty will not lead to rejections of qualified electronic signatures even though the professionals who implement them expect the greatest judicial certainty, since they are presumed to be reliable.
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the Court of Appeal of Pau (CA Pau, February 12, 2026, RG n°25/01900) has just issued a very interesting decision relating to the place of conclusion of an electronically signed contract. In that judgment, which concerned an employment contract, it considered that opting for the place of physical location of one or the other of the parties to designate the place of conclusion of the contract does not make sense, because that alleged location results from an IP address, which can be changed or falsified, and adopting that position would lead to a high degree of legal uncertainty.
The impact of this decision is directly related to the question of the law applicable to the contract and/or the competent court when, in the event that the parties had the freedom to choose them, they did not do so.
This is a first, and a very interesting one!