Abstract-Similar to many other pattern recognition problems, feature extraction contributes significantly to the overall performance of an off-line signature verification system. To be successful, a feature extraction technique must be tolerant to different types of variation whilst preserving essential information of input patterns. In this paper, we describe a grid-based feature extraction technique that utilises directional information extracted from the signature contour, i.e. the chain code histogram. Our experimental results for signature verification indicated that, by applying a suitable 2D Gaussian filter on the matrices containing the chain code histograms, an average error rate (AER) of 13.90% can be obtained whilst maintaining the false acceptance rate (FAR) for random forgeries as low as 0.02%. These figures are comparable or better than those reported by other state of the art feature extraction techniques such as the Modified Direction Feature (MDF) and the Gradient feature.