Online notary requirements in Texas

Trying to find a 3rd party trusted company that provides the digital certificate/digital signatures that is approved by the state for the online notary application process. Is adobe an approved company?

Your SOS should have a list of approved companies. BUT, I’m not sure eSigning is the law yet. Effective date???
Honestly, there doesn’t seem to be much call for this at this time, so consider what you’re thinking about very carefully.
If you have a ‘choice of providers’…my next question is 'will all the co’s you work with use YOUR provider, or do they also have but one that they work with? I dunno…just something to consider before you jump.

I’m interested in Texas (although I live, in VT) because I have relatives there. I’ve looked through the materials at the TX SOS website. It appears they do not approve digital certificate vendors; it’s up to you to review the requirements and insure the vendor meets the requirements. See https://www.sos.state.tx.us/statdoc/online-np-educational.shtml

Some points that struck me:

  • You must register each “device”, which I think means each certificate.
  • A digital certificate you use for notarizations can only be used for notarizations.

For information about Adobe, see https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/certificate-signatures.html

It appears Adobe itself does not issue any certificates. Digital certificates from a variety of sources (certificate authorities) may be used in Adobe; ultimately it is up to the recipient to decide if they will trust a particular certificate authority.

In the real estate arena, on of the attractions of electronic notarizations is integrating the notarization with the other software used by the banks, trust companies, etc. So the title company would probably insist that you be signed up with the vendor they have chosen.

My suggestion would be to wait until you find someone who is ready to pay you to do electronic notarizations in a particular way, and get only what you need to do it that way.