Agent mandates: why paper is no longer enough
The written mandate remains the legal foundation, but in practice it has become nearly useless without digital traceability.
Paper is still the norm
In 95% of cases we come across, the agent mandate is a PDF. Sometimes hand-signed, scanned, sent back by email. Sometimes retyped, with dates in a different font from the rest of the document. It is not necessarily fraudulent. It is just artisanal. And artisanal in a multi-billion euro sector is a problem.
What a digital mandate changes
A digital mandate is not just a PDF stored in the cloud. What matters is the proof: who signed it, when, with what verified identity, for what exact scope. These four elements are enough to prevent roughly half the disputes we observe. The real value is being able to produce a proof in five seconds when someone challenges your legitimacy.
A dispute we witnessed
A French club nearly lost a player this summer because a second agent challenged the primary mandate. The original mandate existed but had been sent by email, with no timestamp and no proof of signature. It took fifteen days and three lawyers to sort it out. With a timestamped digital mandate, it would have taken fifteen minutes.
It is not a technology problem
You might think the challenge is convincing agents to adopt new tools. In reality, agents are the first to want solid mandates. They are the ones who get hurt most in disputes. The real obstacle is that there was no standard recognised across the ecosystem until now. That is the gap FOOTPASS is trying to fill.
Discover FOOTPASS
Authenticated messaging, verified Pass ID, digital authorizations, encrypted vault. Join 1,200+ football members.
Download FOOTPASS
