What is Remote Notarization?

Rhonda
June 14, 2022
notary signing agent

What is Remote Notarization? In 2021 Governor Ducey signed into law the ability for Arizona Notaries Public to notarize documents online. Arizona joins more than 35 states who Notaries Public have already been performing online notarizations and more states have laws in their state legislatures about to be passed.

At least once in our lifetimes, nearly everyone has had to take a document to a notary or had a notary come to them for notarizations because they and the notary had to see each other and the notary had to examine your identification. Now, we can do that across the internet. You and I can notarize your documents and you don’t have to leave the sofa. You can even meet me via your smart-phone on your lunch hour or from the beach! I will be jealous if you call me from the beach though, I’m just telling you now. Seriously, you do not have to be in Arizona.

I am pleased to share that I have signed up with Notarize, the very first online notarization platform in the nation. Notarize has been facilitating online notarizations for a decade. In that decade of experience, the folks at Notarize have encountered every situation and have solutions for them all. Their platform is robust and secure.

So how does it work? You can email me the documents, or upload them yourself to the Notarize platform, I can walk you through it if you like. Then I’ll email you an invitation. When you accept the invitation, you will have to answer 5 KBA questions about yourself. These questions can go back 30 years, it’s all an effort to make sure that you are who you say you are. When I did my own, they asked me which car I owned, and there was the 1985 Mazda GLC with manual choke that I had when I was 18!

Once you answer those 5 multiple choice questions, you will be asked to take a photo of the front and back of your ID with your smart-phone and upload the photos via the app on your phone. The system will verify your ID to make sure it is not fraudulent. It does all the work.

Then we join each other in a session a lot like a zoom call, we’ll be able to see each other and talk to each other. I’ll verify your ID against the face of the person in the session with me. Together we’ll look at your document, then you will place your digital signature where you are supposed to and I’ll place my digital signature and my stamp where I am supposed to. Finally, a digital certificate is applied to make the document tamper-proof. You will be able to download and email the notarized document or print it out once we are done. We like to say you’ll spend 10 minutes prepping and then 5 minutes with me for a single page document. 15 minutes and you don’t have to drive anywhere.

How safe is it? First, the signer must answer those 5 KBA questions within 2 minutes and sometimes they can be hard! You have to think! For example, a bad guy wouldn’t have known that I owned that Mazda all those years ago. Then your ID is verified, front and back! The system looks for any kind of anomaly, anything that could be suspicious. Then I view your ID and your face to make sure, just like I do in real life, that you match the photo in the ID. There is the digital certificate that renders the document tamper-proof. Finally, the entire transaction including the notarization AND the audio/video recording is retained for 10 years. It can be pulled to be reviewed by the Secretary of State or police if a crime is suspected just like my paper journal. These requirements make online notarizations safer, more secure, more verifiable, and more enforceable than traditional paper notarizations. This technology is often superior to the human technology when it comes to spotting fraudulent ID.

I hope you’ll consider online notarization the next time you need a document notarized. It’s fast, safe, secure. And here at Ave Notary, we wanted to pair with the number one premier platform when we offered our customers this service. Your security deserves the best, Ave Notary and Notarize provide the very best. Visit www.avenotary.com to book your appointment for a day and time that is most convenient for you.

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