OneSpan Notary

The following sections describe various aspects of OneSpan Notary's Remote Online Notarization (RON):

• Background

• Product Overview

• Supported Jurisdictions

• Enabling RON for your Account

• Working with RON Transactions

• Video: OneSpan Notary: How to get agreements e-signed and notarized remotely

Background

Notarization assures the parties to a transaction that a signed document is authentic and can be trusted. In particular, it ensures that: (1) the document’s signatures are genuine; (2) the signers acted without duress or intimidation; (3) the signers intended the terms of the document to be in full force and effect.

Notarization is done by a Notary Public, who is authorized by the government to vet, certify and maintain records of notarized documents. The Notary is responsible for the impartial screening of a signer’s identity, willingness and awareness. Such screening detects and deters document fraud, and helps to protect the personal rights and property of citizens from forgers and identity thieves.

In light of recent events, many employers have been urging their staff to work remotely. This has been challenging for Notaries who are accustomed to notarizing documents in face-to-face meetings with signers. In response, certain U.S. states have revised their Remote Online Notarization restrictions to allow Notaries to use online solutions. In those states, Notaries can carry out their duties remotely.

OneSpan Notary enables Remote Online Notarization.

Product Overview

OneSpan Notary's RON enables Notaries in approved state jurisdictions to electronically witness, sign and seal documents without the need to physically meet one another. Instead, signers use electronic signatures to complete documents in the presence of a Notary via web-conferencing software. The Notary witnesses signers signing documents virtually through live videoconferencing.

In each RON signing session, the Notary: (1) authenticates the signers' identity; (2) acts as the session’s host; (3) records the notarization session; (4) permits users to sign documents; (5) confirms the signed documents with a Digital Notary Seal. After the session, the Notary records information about the notarization in an electronic log.

To start using OneSpan Notary's RON, please contact our Sales Team.

When evaluating alternative vendors of web-conferencing software, it's worthwhile considering if the host of a notarization session can: (1) start and stop the recording of a session at will; (2) share their screen with signers; (3) permit signers to remotely control the pointer.

Supported Jurisdictions

OneSpan Notary's RON currently supports the following notary jurisdictions:

Alaska	Minnesota	Oregon
Arizona	Missouri	Pennsylvania
Delaware	Montana	Rhode Island
Hawaii	New Hampshire	Tennessee
Idaho	New Jersey	Texas
Iowa	New Mexico	Virginia
Kansas	New York	Washington
Louisiana	North Dakota	West Virginia
Maryland	Ohio	Wisconsin
Michigan	Oklahoma	Wyoming

If your organization is considering using a Remote Online Notarization process, it’s important to follow your state's notarization requirements as modified by emergency executive orders or other official guidance. Please speak to your organization's legal department for advice about this.

Some states may require Notaries Public to obtain a digital certificate before they can conduct a valid Remote Online Notarization. OneSpan partners with IdenTrust to issue certificates for the states where notaries are required to provide their digital certificates when signing documents. For more on that partnership, click here.

Enabling RON for your Account

The first step toward using OneSpan Notary's RON is to enable Remote Online Notarization for your account.

OneSpan personnel will arrange this by using OneSpan Sign BackOffice to enable the following required features: (1) Remote Online Notarization; (2) Notary Management System; (3) Virtual Room; (4) Virtual Room Recording; (5) Personal Certificate Client.

To enable Remote Online Notarization:

• Please contact our Sales Team.

Admins: Ensuring that a OneSpan Sign Notary Exists

After RON has been enabled, at least one Sender on your account must be a OneSpan Sign Notary.

In the list of users on your account, every OneSpan Sign Notary has a small "notary icon" after their name.

If no existing OneSpan Sign Sender is a Notary, each of the following procedures can create one:

• Creating a New User as a Notary

• Making an Existing User a Notary

Creating a New User as a Notary

To create a new user as a notary you must first ensure that:

• The feature Roles and Permissions is enabled.

• You are logged into the New User Experience with Admin privileges.

To create a new user as a Notary:

1. From the Dashboard’s top menu bar, click Admin > Users.

2. Click Add. An Add User dialog box appears.

3. Complete the fields, ensuring that you select Notary from the Role drop-down list.

4. Click Save.

Making an Existing User a Notary

This procedure works even if the feature Roles and Permissions is not enabled.

To designate an existing user as a notary you must first ensure that:

• You are logged into the New User Experience with Admin privileges.

To make an existing user a Notary:

1. From the Dashboard’s top menu bar, click Admin > Users. A list of users appears.

2. In the row for the relevant Sender, click the three horizontal dots (…), and select Grant notary rights.

3. Verify that a “notary icon” now appears after the name of this Sender.

Notaries: Registering your User Account

This procedure is relevant only if you are a new OneSpan Sign user who was created as a Notary. If so, you will receive an email that invites you to register your user account.

To register your user account:

1. Open your invitation email.

2. Click the link called Register Your Account. An Account Registration form appears.

3. Complete the form, and click Submit.

Managing your Notary Account

The Notarization section of your account can be used to manage the following:

• Your Notary Commission

• Your Preferences

• Your Journals

Notaries: Registering your Notary Commission

After a Notary's user account is registered, they must register their Notary Commission.

To register your Notary Commission:

1. From the Dashboard's top menu bar, click the Head icon and select My Account. A new page appears.

2. Under Notarization in the left pane, click Notary Commission. The Notary Commission page appears.

3. Add your commission details:

   • Electronic notary: Select this option if you are a notary public, meaning that you are authorized to sign and seal electronically during an in-person meeting.

   • Remote online notary: Select this option if you are authorized to notarize documents during a remote signing session.

   You can also select both options, if you are authorized to do so.

4. Complete the following fields:

   • Name: Enter your full legal name, as it appears on your notary commission.

   • Country: Select the country where you are a notary.

   • Jurisdiction: Select the state where you are a notary.

   • Number: Enter your commission number.

   • Expiration date: Enter your commission’s expiration date.

   • Seal: Attach an image of the Digital Notary Seal you intend to stamp on documents.

5. Read the text next to the checkbox, and select the box.

6. Click Save.

Setting your Notary Preferences

To speed up the notarization process you can define certain preferences that can be easily selected when creating your Journal entries. The following preferences can be configured:

• Document types: While certain document types are included by default you can also click Add Type to manually define a different category for your document types.

• Notarization types: Notarization types are the notarial acts that you can perform on documents. While there are default types listed you can also click Add Type to add more. You can also use the Use as default option to select a notarization type that you use more often that others.

• Journal: You can select this option to automatically use an electronic journal for all IPEN transactions. If you do not select this option you will need to manually create a notary journal after each transaction.

Working with RON Transactions

Once you have configured your RON notary settings you can begin to work with RON transactions.

Senders: Creating a RON Transaction

Once all the above matters have been addressed, a Sender — possibly a Notary — can create a Remote Online Notarization transaction.

To create a RON transaction:

1. On the Dashboard, click New Transaction. A Create New Transaction dialog box appears.

2. Complete the fields, ensuring that in the drop-down list just above the word SETTINGS, you select Remote Online Notarization.

3. Click Create. A new dialog box appears.

4. Add all desired documents to the transaction.

5. From the Notary drop-down list, select the Notary you want for this transaction. Note: This list contains every Notary on your account who has an active Notary Commission.

6. Add all desired recipients to the transaction.

For each recipient you add, click the three horizontal dots (…), and select Settings. A Recipient Details dialog box appears. Ensure that this box contains relevant information about the recipient, since the Notary will eventually want to record it in a Journal about the transaction. Note that recipients don’t need to be from the state or country where the Notary is commissioned. If you added information in this box, click Save.

7. Next to the selection of Remote Online Notarization you made in Step 2, click Configure. A Virtual Signing Room dialog box opens.

8. Specify a Start date and time. This information is required.

9. Configure any desired optional setting.

10. Click Save. The Virtual Signing Room dialog box closes.

11. Click Next. The transaction’s first document appears.

12. From the left pane:

    1. Click each signer in turn, and drag the Signature fields for each signer onto the document.

    2. Click the Notary, and if their signature is required on the document: (i) drag onto the document a Signature field, the RonStatement, and the Autofields NotaryName and NotarySeal; (ii) drag any of the following Autofields onto the document: NotaryCountry, NotaryJurisdiction, NotaryLicenseExpiryDate, NotaryLicenseNumber (some of these fields may be required in the Notary’s jurisdiction).

13. In the right pane, configure any other desirable Field Settings.

14. Repeat Steps 11-13 for each document in the transaction.

15. Click Send to Sign. A Confirm popup window appears.

16. Click Send. The system sends email invitations to all recipients.

Notaries: Hosting a RON Meeting

A RON transaction's signing session is hosted by its Notary.

To host a RON meeting you must first ensure that:

• You are the designated Notary for a RON transaction.

• You are using the New User Experience.

• If you are using a VPN, it must allow a WebSocket connection on port 443. This is needed because we are using WebSocket Secure (WSS).

• A minimum Internet speed of 3 Mbps is recommended for both hosts and participants.

To host a RON meeting:

1. Access the RON transaction. The system displays a Welcome screen for the meeting.
2. Configure your audio and video settings for the meeting as follows:
   • If you want to turn your microphone on/off, click the Mic icon.

   • If you want to turn your camera on/off, click the Camera icon.

   • If you want to change your audio input device, audio output device, or video device, click the Settings icon and follow the prompts.

3. When it's time for the meeting, open your invitation email, and click Go to Event. You will be directed to the Waiting Room, where you can see the status of each recipient.

   • Online: Recipient has been authenticated and is in the Waiting Room.

   • Offline: Recipient has not yet connected.

   • Authenticating: Recipient is in the process of being authenticated.

   • Authentication Failed: Recipient failed their authentication.

A signer initiates their participation in the meeting by opening their invitation email, and clicking Go to Event. If the host has not yet joined the meeting, a message tells the signer that they are in the Waiting Room. They will remain there until the host joins the meeting. Once a signer is authenticated, a Welcome screen appears from which the signer can configure their Mic, Camera and other Settings (see Step 2 above). When the signer is ready to join the meeting, they click Join Meeting.

4. When you’re ready to start the transaction, click Start Transaction or Join Session. A new screen appears.

5. Verify the identity of each participant as follows:

   1. Open the dialog box that contains personal information about the participant. This box will be visible to only the host and the participant.

   2. Ensure that the following fields are filled in: Street Address, City, State/Province/Region, Postal/Zip Code, Country.

   3. Enter your relationship to the signer in the field Relationship. Note: This field is required for the initial release of OneSpan Notary's RON.

   4. Click Confirm Verification. The dialog box closes.

6. A list of the transaction’s documents appears in your left pane, and the first document appears in your right pane. From now until the end of the meeting, the signers will see everything you do except that left pane.

7. Invite the first signer to control the screen by clicking the mouse icon under the signer's name on the right control panel.

At this point, the first signer sees that invitation, and hopefully clicks Accept. They can then review the document, sign their Signature Fields, and click Confirm to verify their acceptance of the document. When all the signer’s required actions have been completed for the first document, they are prompted to pass control back to the host. They do so by clicking OK. All participants can now see the first signer’s applied signatures on the first document.

8. Repeat the previous step for each signer.

9. When all signers have signed the first document, click Next to proceed to the next document.

10. Repeat Steps 7-9 until all signers have signed all documents.

After you have finished signing, and if that document has a Notary Seal, click Apply Seal. At this point your Notary Seal will be applied.

11. Finish the signing process by clicking Finished. A Signing Complete screen indicates that all the signers' identities were verified, and all documents were signed.

12. Click End session for signers. A Close session popup window appears. Click End Session.

Each participant is now released to a summary page that enables them to review and download the transaction’s documents.

13. A Journal page appears. Confirm its lists of Signers and Notarization documents. Because you are the Notary, you will not be in the Signers list.

14. For each document: (a) complete the fields Document type and Notarial act; (b) optionally, add Comments.

15. Click Save and Finish. A page appears that enables you to review and download the transaction’s documents.

16. In the More Actions menu, select Exit signing mode.

Notaries: Reviewing & Downloading a Journal

The Notary is responsible for downloading and storing all the documentation related to a notarized meeting. That documentation includes all signed documents, the Journal, the Evidence Summary, and any recordings made during the signing session.

OneSpan stores a signing session's recordings for only seven days.

The following procedure describes how Notaries can review and download a Journal they've created.

To review and download a Journal:

1. From the Dashboard's top menu bar, click the Head icon and select My Account. A new page appears.

2. In the left pane, click Journal. The right pane displays a list of available Journals.

3. Use the Search fields to find a specific Journal. You can also sort the displayed Journals by name and date.

4. Select the Journals that you would like to download.

5. Click the Download icon next to the Journal.

Some states require a Journal to be electronically signed by the transaction's signers. In those cases, we advise the Notary to: (1) download the Journal; (2) invite the signers to sign the Journal; (3) store the fully e-signed Journal in the same place as the transaction's other documentation.

All Journals are tamper-sealed.

When a Notary user is deleted from OneSpan Sign, the system deletes all their notary information (e.g., all their transactions and all their Journals).

Video: OneSpan Notary: How to get agreements e-signed and notarized remotely