Why e-sign
As electronic signatures become the norm for formalising written agreements, it’s natural to have questions about moving away from signing paper documents and going digital. The convenience of signing this way is obvious, but is e-sign secure? Is it legal? And how does e-sign work?
More than a digital scribble
What is e-signing? Signing a document electronically is very easy: it can be as simple as adding your personal scribble to the bottom of a digital agreement and then clicking a “Sign” button.
But what you get is much more than meets the eye, and with the right e-sign service, e-signing can actually be safer and more reliable than pen and paper signatures.
What makes a signature legal?
For any agreement – whether on paper or in electronic format – to be legally binding, three key elements must be in place:
- Evidence of the signatory’s intent to enter the agreement, which could be clicking a button
- Evidence of the signatory’s identity, which could be the email address the agreement was sent to
- Document integrity: a method for showing that the agreement has not been altered after it was signed
Want to know more? Hear a legal scholar explain clearly and simply in these short videos.
Basic e-signing steps
So how does Scrive accomplish these three elements? Let’s look at a simple signing process using the Scrive eSign service. You can try it yourself for free with a 30-day trial.
- Upload a PDF agreement to the eSign signing portal.
- Enter the signatory’s email address or mobile number, and click Start signing to send them an invitation to sign the document in the portal.
- After the signatory reviews the agreement, they click a button to sign it (they can also draw their signature with a mouse or touch screen, but it’s not legally required).
- Scrive collects and saves legal evidence (an audit log securely attached to the signed document) to show:
- the signatory’s intent to enter the agreement: the contents of the document and their action of clicking to sign
- the signatory’s identity: the email address or mobile number where they received the invitation link
- Finally, Scrive applies a digital seal to the signed document, together with the evidence, to prove its integrity. If anyone alters the document after it was signed, the seal would be broken. There are legally accepted methods for clearly showing if a digital seal is intact.
Why Scrive?
Your digital journey may be complex, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Scrive’s extensive expertise and experience, together with our culture of continuous innovation and customer focus, are the keys to our growing success. Read more here
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