Adobe and Notarize announced Thursday a partnership that will bring remote online notarization (RON) to Adobe Sign, the former’s e-signature platform. The partnership comes at a time when RON is exploding in demand, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pat Kinsel | Photo credit: Notarize
“Five years after pioneering the RON category, we’re at the magical moment where the market, the Notarize platform, the regulatory environment, and consumer demand have all converged to a place where industries and enterprises are clamoring for RON,” Pat Kinsel, Notarize’s founder and CEO, said in a statement.
“Together with Adobe, we’re meeting millions of enterprises at this moment with an integrated platform that couples ease-of-use with security, all in one place,” Kinsel added. “Once customers try it, they’ll never go back.”
The goal of the partnership is to eliminate the barrier that in-person notarization provides to a fully digital fintech transaction. Now Adobe Sign customers — which includes real estate and mortgage/title, as well as will and trust, banking, title for buying/selling autos, and others — will have instant access to fully remote notarization with both first and third-party notaries in all 50 sates.
Merging the two technologies will reduce timelines and increases customer satisfaction, as well as eliminate errors and enhance accuracy, according to a Notarize spokesperson. It will also reduce security and fraud risks, as Notarize employs “enterprise-grade security, credential analysis, and a full audit trail, which prevents fraud,” according to a spokesperson.
It will be available to all Adobe Sign customers in the first half of 2021.
The need for a fully digital transaction is booming in the real estate industry especially, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shuttered many in-person activities. Notarize specifically has seen a 600 percent growth in the use of its services in the past six months, according to a spokesperson.
Adobe’s Sign platform has also seen 175 percent user growth since January. The company competes head-to-head in the e-signature space with DocuSign, which has counted the National Association of Realtors among its investors. DocuSign also expanded into the RON business with the acquisition of LiveOak Technologies in July.
