Why would anyone ever want to digitize this? (Source: Getty Images)
Notarizing paper mortgage documents sucks bad.
Last week, Notarize, a company that digitzes the process, closed a $130m round of funding. CEO Pat Kinsel sat down with Protocol to talk about Notarize’s rise and evolution as the “last-mile solution for legal infrastructure.”
A lofty claim, but Notarize sails are full. The company:
- Has raised $213m in total funding
- Is used by Fortune 100s in all 50 states
- Has seen its revenue grow 6x in the last 12 months
- Has seen an 800% increase in processed transactions
Before 2017, notarizing a document online was a legal pipe dream
Notarization deters fraud by bringing in a 3rd-party to verify identities and signatures on documents.
After a year of lobbying state governments, Notarize facilitated the first “e-closing” in 2017 and collectively melted mortgage companies’ brains.
Today, the Notarize team is supporting a federal bill that would set a minimum standard for online notaries in all 50 states.
A stripe for documents?
Kinsel sees Notarize as the document plug-in for end-to-end transactions, allowing businesses and individuals to easily incorporate notarizations and signing into their workflow.
But competitors like DocuSign are close behind.
DocuSign announced its own online notary service just a few weeks ago, putting the company’s $38m acquisition of Texas-based Liveoak Technologies to work.
It’s a move Kinsel takes credit for forcing.
