Everything you'd ask before signing.

The certificate is a signed PDF containing the document hash, the verified identity record, the full forensic timeline of the ceremony, and a public URL that resolves to a live verification page. Admissibility is determined by the court in any given jurisdiction, but the certificate is designed to satisfy the evidentiary requirements of civil proceedings in the jurisdictions we operate in. Our legal team can provide a declaration on request.

District Seal is not a state-commissioned notary public in the traditional sense. We produce a technological record of identity and consent. Whether that record satisfies the notarization requirements of any specific jurisdiction is a legal question that depends on the jurisdiction and the document. Consult a licensed attorney in the relevant jurisdiction before relying on District Seal for a notarization requirement.

Yes. District Seal is available worldwide and currently signs documents in dozens of countries. All data is stored in the United States. For transactions governed by the law of the EU, UK, or Switzerland, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses for the transfer of personal data to the U.S. A copy of the SCCs is available on request from legal@districtseal.com.

District Seal is built to the ESIGN Act (U.S. Federal) and UETA (state-level) requirements for electronic signature validity. Identity assurance uses WebAuthn / FIDO2 hardware-backed authentication at NIST SP 800-63-3 AAL2. Documents are bound with SHA-256. Records are retained for 7 years per U.S. standards for signed instruments. GDPR and CCPA deletion requests are honored within 30 days. Data is hosted in the United States.

Six checks run in sequence on the signer's own device: (1) WebAuthn hardware-backed device authentication; (2) forced document scroll to 100%; (3) informed consent, recorded; (4) spoken challenge phrase against a randomized three-word phrase on camera; (5) head-turn liveness — left, then right on cue; (6) face match against the reference photo provided at upload. Every step is timestamped and recorded in the transaction's forensic event log.

Every signed document is hashed with SHA-256 — a cryptographic function that produces a unique 64-character fingerprint of the exact file. That fingerprint is bound to the certificate. If the document is later modified by even one character, the hash changes and the certificate will not verify. This is what makes the certificate tamper-evident.

Yes. Every certificate carries a QR code and a public URL. Anyone — a counterparty, a court, an auditor — can visit the URL and confirm the certificate is valid without an account, a phone call, or our involvement. The page shows the signer's name, the reference number, the document hash prefix, the verification mode, and the timestamp.

Voice recordings, liveness video, and face-match frames are destroyed immediately after each ceremony completes — before the certificate is issued. Only the derived result — pass or fail, and a numeric distance score — is retained. We do not store biometric templates that could be reused for identification.

We keep the signed document, the reference photo, the certificate, the forensic event log, the signer's IP address, user-agent string, and (when supplied) a device fingerprint hash. Raw biometric media — voice recordings, liveness video, and face frames — is destroyed immediately after each ceremony. Certificates and forensic records are retained for 7 years per U.S. record-keeping standards for signed instruments.

Only parties with a legal or contractual right to the document: the individual who signed, the organisation on whose behalf it was signed, courts, law enforcement, lawyers representing a party, and parties named in the underlying agreement. Requests must come from an official email address belonging to the requesting organisation. Free email services are not accepted for third-party requests. A complete request receives the certified record on first reply. Send to verify@districtseal.com.

Every certificate and document is backed up to redundant cloud storage immediately after issuance. If the primary copy is lost, we can restore it from the redundant copy. Records are retained for 7 years.

Write to duress@districtseal.com with the certificate reference (format DS-TX-XXXXXXXX). We reply within 24 hours with a structured questionnaire. We flag the certificate as under active dispute — anyone scanning the QR sees this — and record the report permanently in the audit trail. We cannot erase a signature that already occurred, and only a court can void a legal agreement, but we can ensure the record shows the matter is disputed. If you are in immediate physical danger, call your local emergency number first.

Free: 3 signatures per month, no card required. Pay-as-you-go: $25 one-time for 10 signatures, credits never expire. Pro: $29 per month for 25 signatures, API access, up to 5 signers per transaction. Firm: $99 per month for 150 signatures, direct 1-on-1 assistance, bug fixes for your clients in minutes to hours. Unlimited team members on every plan. No per-user pricing. See full pricing.

Yes. You can cancel at any time from Settings → Billing in your dashboard. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. Access continues until then. We do not refund partial months already billed. Full details on our Refund Policy.

Traditional e-signature tools verify that an email address received a link and someone clicked it. District Seal verifies that a specific, physically present, willing human signed the document — using face match, voice challenge, head-turn liveness, and hardware-backed device authentication. The result is a certificate that proves identity, not just intent. Additionally, District Seal offers a duress reporting mechanism and a public dispute flag, which traditional tools do not.