For equipment, the laptop would be the most expensive part, but many folks have one anyway for other activities. Newer laptops come with built in wifi, so there's no need for a card. Just turn on the hot spot function on your smartphone. In some areas it might be necessary to use the signer's wifi, due to a lack of cellular coverage. The title company might not want us to do that, which makes the ability to complete a signing unpredictable.
In my state, Pavaso has the notary fill out an affidavit with the notary's "seal" and have the affidavit notarized before a different notary. That gets scanned, the "seal" gets cropped from the rest of the affidavit, and that will be used as the "seal" on documents.
I put "seal" in quotes because my state doesn't require notary seals, and if the notary wants to use one, they are defined as follows:
1 V.S.A. § 133
"When a seal of a court, public officer, or corporation is required to be affixed to a paper, "seal" shall include an impression of the official seal made upon paper alone or by means of a wafer or wax affixed thereto."
So it's doubtful that a rubber stamp even counts as a seal. An electronic image in an electronic document definitely isn't a seal.
As far as a digital certificate goes, that would be applied by Pavaso's servers and the notary authorizes it by logging in, entering a code for the specific signing, and clicking the appropriate boxes. This differs from some other approaches, where the digital certificate would be stored on a USB device in the notary's possession. |
