According to Internet Week, China has decided to legalize electronic signatures. The report claims that the reasons behind this move are to help stimulate China’s Internet based economy.

China’s parliament has legalized electronic signatures in an effort to boost its small but growing online commerce industry.

The law gives such signatures the legal status of handwritten signatures and allows the creation of companies to verify the identity of participants in an online transaction, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

In China, 87 million people use the Internet. But E-commerce has grown slowly, held back by a low rate of credit-card use and a lack of other online payment options and legal structures.