Stephen Wildstrom reports in Business Week on how notaries are moving into the digital age — with digitized (not digital) signatures — in many ways ahead of the rest of us! Biometric fingerprint access is also used for access control.
On May 28, the National Notary Assn., a professional organization of more than 200,000 notaries, will endorse a new system called the Electronic Notary Journal of Official Acts (ENJOA). This will let notaries use computer files instead of paper logbooks to record their witnessing of official signings. The $550 ENJOA hardware-software package will save a digital record of the signature along with the notary’s records and supporting information on signers, including digital photos and thumbprint scans.