One of last year’s Emerging 8 honorees has a new brand and solution.

Notarize recently relaunched itself as Proof, with both a new company brand and products for complete digital identity verification.

Proof looks to deliver valid, secure, enforceable evidence for faster and safer digital transactions.

Since its founding in 2015, Notarize has processed millions of transactions ranging from real estate e-closings and vehicle bills of sales, to affidavits of identity and powers of attorneys. The company is now establishing Proof to extend its services beyond notarization and offer a much-sought-after “instant trust,” in the form of a difficult-to-forge record that verifies and locks a consumer’s identity with each transaction.

According to Federal Trade Commission data, there were more than 1.1 million reports of identity theft in 2022 with imposter scams the most commonly reported fraud. The FTC data showed these scams cost victims $8.8 billion, an increase of more than 30% over the previous year.

Proof explained its platform is built to provide a new level of assurance to the world’s largest banks and real estate customers already transacting with Notarize. It’s a single platform to secure any type of digital agreement, whether it requires a basic signature or a notarization.

The platform can maintain all the core components of an online notarization: signer details, video interaction with a notary, tamper-proof signatures, comprehensive audit trail, and a record of the credential and biometric used for the transaction.

With Proof, the same core technology will be used to secure all signatures and customer interactions, not just a notarization.

“Every business regardless of size has had to move online to fully service their customers. Although they’ve been able to successfully complete transactions, the infrastructure to ensure those transactions are bulletproof just isn’t there,” Notarize founder and CEO Pat Kinsel said in a news release. “We excel in building transaction infrastructure and raising the bar with new standards.

“Since our inception, we’ve fiercely advocated for remote online notarization legislation, helped pass state regulations in 43 states to adopt online notarization, and set the standard for legally signing documents online from anywhere. But identity infrastructure is still lacking and trust online is broken: e-signatures need more rigor to better prove every signer is who they say they are,” Kinsel continued.

“With the introduction of Proof, we are delivering that instant trust with a technology that indisputably locks a signer’s identity with a particular transaction, shutting down digital fraud before it happens,” Kinsel went on to say.

Today, Proof is introducing a single platform that combines capabilities that produce auditable identification with cryptographic evidence:

—Smart Platform: A platform that can understand state/federal laws, regulatory requirements and industry standards to ensure any type of agreement can be signed legally and is accepted.

—NIST IAL2 Verification: Identity verification that will be certified for NIST IAL2 security. An auditable identification process that can verify ID documents alongside a biometric which can be escalated for a human to review when trust is at risk.

—Enhanced Signer Identification: Proof has a signature platform with Enhanced Signer Identification. It can provide evidence about the identity, not just the transaction. It includes enriched data about the identification history, location, IP address and device fingerprint.

Coming soon, it will also include data found in public records or carrier networks and applies a concept of a risk score.

—Notarize Network: With thousands of active members, the Notarize Network is one of the largest network of online notaries. Available 24/7 with less than one second wait time, notaries can perform an online notarization on demand, or they can now act as a trusted agent to verify an identity. The network of trusted notaries will provide that human review when a NIST IAL2 process requires it.

—Tamper-proof signatures: Agreements that are cryptographically signed so that signatures are self-verifying and cannot be altered. Later this year, Proof will be issuing digital certificates for all notaries that are AATL-compliant.

“At First American our customers trust us to facilitate and protect what is often the largest transaction of their lives, buying and selling their home. That’s why we’re continually looking for ways to make the process of buying and selling real estate simple, transparent and secure,” said Paul Hurst, chief innovation officer at First American.

“With Proof, First American gains enhanced identity validation for transaction participants, providing a new standard for trust and certainty in the signed documents we rely on to close real estate transactions,” Hurst continued in the news release.

Proof has experienced tremendous growth over the past eight years.

The pandemic dramatically accelerated its momentum as the world was forced to conduct all business transactions online. Notarize scaled its business by 600% in 2021 and raised a $130 million Series D funding round in 2021, bringing its valuation to more than $760 million.

The company is backed by investors including Canapi Ventures, Camber Creek, Polaris Ventures, Anywhere, Alphabet’s independent growth fund CapitalG, Citi Ventures, Lennar, Wells Fargo, True Bridge Capital Partners, and the National Association of Realtors.

Notarize used capital from its recent investment to meet enterprise security requirements and build Proof to address customers’ demands for greater security in all of their critical transactions.

“No one was thinking about digital notarization in 2015, but Pat was,” said Jake Fingert of Camber Creek, an early investor in Notarize. “Today, people think about digital footprints and artificial intelligence, but there is a major gap in proving identities and having an absolute source of truth post-transaction. The team has the experience, expertise and product to fill that gap, setting a new standard for modern identity verification with Proof.”