Texas Passes Remote Online Notarization Bill

Update: on June 1, 2017, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed HB1217 into law, officially bringing remote online notarization to Texas.

We’re thrilled to report that the Texas Senate voted today to empower Texas notaries to conduct notarizations online – putting them one step closer to being on par with Virginia to empower their notaries to conduct notarizations online. The bill has already passed the House 141-1, so it’s now headed to the Governor to be signed into law.

Like Virginia, the Texas legislation embraces how consumers and businesses rely upon online services and gives Texas notaries the authority to notarize signatures on documents for citizens of all 50 states, regardless of where they’re located at the time of signing (at home or abroad).

Notarize is leading the effort to empower notaries across the country with the tools to execute remote online notarizations. We worked closely in Texas with a coalition of partners that included realtors, banks, lenders, title companies, credit unions, notaries, technology companies like LegalZoom and Microsoft, and others to get this done. Here is a letter that shows the diversity of support for the bill. The level of support is pretty amazing when you consider that when we launched a short year and a half ago, very few people had heard of online notarization or believed it was even possible.

Fast-forward here at Notarize, we’ve now helped tens of thousands of people and businesses notarize their documents around the world. Here is a recent map we released showing a snapshot of the location of our recent customers. Whether it’s members of the military stationed abroad or businesses at home helping their customers notarize sensitive documents, we make the notarization process faster, more secure, and verifiable.

Until now, we’ve routed all signers to Virginia notaries public to get their documents signed and notarized online. Moving forward, for Texas citizens, we’ll be able to send them to Texas notaries first, giving them the optimal customer experience using trained Texas electronic notaries who understand the local customs, documents, and culture in the state.

We’re not done yet. The next step is the bill being sent to the Governor to sign. But today’s vote was a huge leap forward for online notarization. When we launched, we made the commitment that we’d work with any state that wants to enable their notaries to perform online notarizations. We’re excited to welcome Texas notaries to the platform and will be opening offices in Texas once this is signed into law. If you’re a notary interested in bringing online notarization to your state email us at policy@notarize.com.