The ESIGN Act and the UETA under the Microscope DrySign by Exela
Regulations like the ESIGN act (The Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act) and the UETA (The Uniform Electronic Transactions Act) in the USA have helped other countries move in the right direction. With all the legal backing, digital signatures can do what they do best – help businesses go paperless, save time, money, and a lot of infrastructural costs. Let’s take a closer look at these regulations and dive deep into details. The ESIGN Act The ESIGN Act was passed on 30th June 2000, by the Clinton government. This law granted validity to electronic records and signatures in online transactions, be it interstate or foreign trade. To enforce the law uniformly, some basic hardware and software requirements have been set forth. Apart from those, there are some major checkboxes that electronic signature applications need to tick to obtain legal validity.
The electronic signature is legally valid if the intent to sign from all the signing parties is clear.
The electronic signatures should associate the signatures to the electronic record in a secure manner.
The electronic signature application should preserve the identity of the signing parties.
The electronic signature software should maintain a log of all the transactions, which should be available for the signing parties at all times.
Once these conditions are met, the electronic signature application can be deemed legit. These rules cover most of the scenarios that in turn, have helped save tons of paper. In the USA alone, the annual amount of paper consumption is enough to build a 10 feet-tall wall
The ESIGN Act and the UETA under the Microscope