Paper is a thing of the past. More and more business relationships are shifting towards the digital world. The advantages in most cases are massive savings of time & effort for all sides.
But when it comes to signing contracts, many people in the business world are still unsure: Can I sign contracts digitally? Are these signatures legally valid? And what are the concrete advantages?
We have summarized the most important facts for you.
Signing contracts electronically has massive advantages
Situations like these still occur regularly: A new rental apartment or a new job is found over the internet. Initiation, contact and negotiations are conducted completely digitally or via phone.
However, when it comes to concluding the contract, you often find this: “Please print it out and send it to us signed.” This often implies sending the original via physical mail. Moreover, it is not uncommon for physical presence to be requested to sign the contract – still a standard procedure for rental agreements.
This already generates a great deal of effort on both sides. Afterwards, the paper document has to be scanned in again, entered into the system and archived in compliance with legal requirements.
Despite the elaborate measures, you cannot prove the identity of the signers beyond doubt, for example if someone commits identity theft.
In contrast, a completely digital contract signing process has many tangible advantages:
- You reduce any waiting times to a minimum
- You avoid media disruptions – the entire process is completely digital
- You eliminate costs for printing, sending and archiving documents
- You eliminate the need for physical presence when signing contracts, which in turn enables concepts such as the completely digital e-office
- You can easily digitally store and retrieve all signed documents and prove authenticity
- You can identify all signers beyond doubt
Read more about the benefits of digital signatures in the linked blog post. The benefits seem clear, but do you know how easy signing contracts digitally really is?
Signing contracts digitally is easy
Signing contracts electronically is extremely easy with Certifaction while maintaining the highest level of privacy possible:
- Create an account with Certifaction (for a single document a free account is sufficient).
- Now drag and drop the contract you want to sign into the corresponding field.
- Add all signatories and choose which signature standard should be used. You can also optionally specify other things like the signing order and the placement of the signature on the page.
- A request is automatically sent to all invited signers, in case of a PES and QES the secure electronic identification of each signer follows right away.
- Done!
This process can be completed in less than 1 minute, depending on the signature type. Even with a Qualified eSignature, it usually takes only a few minutes in total to sign the document.
You can print out the contract again afterwards as a digital twin. The added QR code enables you to prove the authenticity of the document and the signatures beyond doubt.
This way, you and all other signers can sign contracts from anywhere and any device. There is no more media disruption, and you can also completely eliminate the need to travel to sign in person.
Are digital signatures for contracts legally valid?
Fortunately, legislators in most countries – including Switzerland and the entire EU – have created excellent frameworks for digital signatures in recent years. The result:
Electronic signatures are legally valid for almost all conceivable use cases – such as contracts – and are equivalent to a handwritten signature.
In some cases, however, there are formal requirements for certain types of contracts. This means that in these cases you must use a so-called Qualified Electronic Signature (QES) to be on the safe side legally.
Here, each signer is uniquely identified via a special identification service provider. However, the signing process itself remains as simple as described above.
For all cases where QES is not explicitly required, you can use the Professional eSignature (PES) by Certifaction: With this, all signers are also securely identified – at minimal cost and maximum speed.
You can find more information on our page on the legal validity of digital signatures.
You can read about the special regulations for the electronic signing of rental agreements in detail in the linked article.
More information? Feel free to contact us!
If you want to save costs & time in the long term and provide a better user experience for your customers, employees and business partners, then electronic signatures for contracts and other electronic documents are the optimal choice.
Do you have any questions? Then feel free to contact us! We will take the time to address your concerns.