OneSpan Notary accelerates digital transformation for notarization

OneSpan announced the launch of OneSpan Notary, a next-generation, all-in-one, cloud-connected solution that enables organizations to transform the way notaries and customers complete agreements and notarize documents in a secure and trusted environment.

OneSpan Notary was co-designed in collaboration with commissioned notaries across industries to ensure security and help achieve compliance with a streamlined user experience. This innovative solution provides a new level of flexibility, making it refreshingly easy for notaries and signers to transition from a cumbersome paper process to complete and trusted end-to-end notarization in the cloud.

With the pandemic accelerating the need for digital business transactions, organizations are seeking more streamlined alternatives for digital and remote document notarization. In the U.S., over a billion documents are notarized annually. Everyday events, such as buying a house, creating an affidavit, or transferring a car title––may all require notarization, creating additional friction in the process.

Also, identity theft and fraud continue to rise significantly––scammers target high-value transactions, such as property transfers, mortgages, estate documents, and powers of attorney. Dozens of U.S. state legislatures used the pandemic to pass bills legally allowing for digital or remote online notarization (RON). To date, more than 40 U.S. states have passed legislation for RON.

As a result, the demand for highly-secure online notary services has skyrocketed across the U.S., in parallel to the increasing adoption of qualified electronic signature solutions globally.

“OneSpan Notary is a solution that solves real-life business problems,” said Jim Lundy, CEO of Aragon Research. “As notaries are seeing the volume of digital transactions grow as they transition to digital environments, they face increasingly complex threats. Striking a balance between a highly-secure environment without sacrificing ease-of-use is a real challenge for enterprises today. In a digital economy, the need to do transactions in a virtual manner is increasing and that is one of the reasons OneSpan has introduced its new OneSpan Notary offering to the market.”

“We are focused on developing innovations that both help and protect people––wherever they are––and securing digital agreements from today’s most harmful security threats without negatively impacting the experience,” said Sameer Hajarnis, CPO at OneSpan.

“This need is so important that we are introducing a pilot program available today to allow notaries to see the future of digital agreements first-hand. After all, people play a critical role in the notarization process. Because notarizations are often a key final step in high-value transactions across the automotive, banking, real estate, legal, and insurance industries, notaries must have undisputed identification of the signers––if they fail to do so, they risk facing civil liability or even losing their notary license. We developed a solution built for notaries, with notaries, that streamlines experiences for all parties, enabling them to connect with customers and complete transactions anywhere in a trusted environment that mitigates fraud and security risks to protect Web3,” Hajarnis concluded.

OneSpan Notary is built on top of OneSpan’s Transaction Cloud Platform, assembling services from the full portfolio of enterprise-grade solutions, including e-signature, identity verification, authentication, and secure vaulting used by some of the world’s most trusted and security-conscious organizations.

OneSpan also plans to integrate OneSpan Notary with two additional capabilities in OneSpan’s portfolio: Digipass for hardware-based strong authentication and technology from the anticipated acquisition of ProvenDB to bring a higher trust model of notarized assets leveraging blockchain to securely store documents.

Developed for organizations with in-house notaries, OneSpan Notary guides users through every aspect of the customer journey while delivering bank-grade security and facilitating RON compliance requirements that deliver security and trust throughout the entire digital transaction lifecycle.

OneSpan Notary enables organizations to:

• Facilitate legally-binding, compliant, and secure signatures in real-time
• Offer secure videoconferencing to support multiple signers in different locations (via web browser; no downloads required)
• Provide an effortless notarization experience for signers and notaries with guided workflows
• Mitigate security risks and fraud with identity-proofing options (ID Verification and Knowledge-based Authentication (KBA) and built-in security controls preventing participants from signing on behalf of others
• Record video alongside a unified audit trail that captures detailed events during the notarial session
• Utilize notarization capabilities, including the ability to apply a notarial seal and access an electronic journal to collect and securely save information from the online notary session
• Ensure that the organization’s brand is front and center at all times (from the email invitation through the signing experience), resulting in a trusted experience

OneSpan’s Transaction Cloud Platform pricing model enables a flexible, simplified, and cost-effective way to help customers deliver business outcomes without overbuying and under-consuming licenses. OneSpan Notary is the newest addition to the platform and pricing structure and allows customers to choose consumption tiers, including unlimited enterprise-wide transaction and user models.

It spans the entire digital agreements lifecycle from identifying an unknown signer all the way to securely storing agreements and artifacts. OneSpan Notary is expected to be generally available in March 2023 for US-based customers who employ in-house notaries in eligible states.

OneSpan plans to add support for notaries in additional states and countries and enhance the workflow for in-person digital notarization throughout 2023. A pilot program is available for qualifying organizations to access the latest capabilities of the solution.