# Electronic Signing
Explore our Electronic Signing documentation
We now support our existing Enterprise and Express Electronic Signing solutions on our new platform.
If you are a new customer or have recently migrated to our new platform, see our guide on setting up an API integration below.
If you are an existing customer but have not yet migrated to our new platform you can find the documentation to use with your established integration here:
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# Introduction
Signicat's Electronic Signing solutions allow you to digitalise business processes by applying electronic signatures on documents such as contracts and loan agreements. The advantage of our Electronic Signing solutions is the ability to securely identify the user according to EU regulations – a key component for providing compliant electronic signatures.
# Features
We offer REST APIs using European identity providers (as well as SMS and Email OTP) for creating electronic signatures on contracts, declarations, forms and other documents.
- OAuth2 for authentication
- Customisable, responsive signing interface
- Authentication-based signing or third-party (native) signing
- Advanced and Qualified Electronic Signatures (AES and QES) as defined by the eIDAS European regulation
- Signed documents in XAdES or PAdES format
- Support for signer queues/ workflows
# Use case examples
Signicat's Electronic Signing solutions are built flexibly, to enable you to implement any use case that you might have. Here are some examples of how the solutions are being used today:
- Signing of PDF documents containing interactive forms
- Signing of short text statements using Signed Statement
- Headless signing of text elements with Consent Signature
- Collecting of signatures on multiple documents at the same time
- Signature forwarding/ approvals
- Handwritten signatures
- Sealing
- Signature validation
- Secure document sharing
- User management
# Set up an API integration
If you are a new customer or have recently migrated to our new platform, you can now use our existing Enterprise and Express Electronic Signing solutions on our new platform.
Setting up an API integration is the most flexible way of testing our signature solutions. You can use your preferred IDE, Framework, Postman, etc. using credentials provided by Signicat.
Before you start the integration
Before you set up an API integration, it is recommended to familiarise yourself with the most common integration use cases and the OpenAPI reference documentation and guides to learn about available endpoints and their properties.
# Initial preparations
If you don't have an account already, you need to sign up for a free Signicat account:
# Sign up to Signicat
Register as a user in the Signicat Dashboard (opens new window).
You can find out how to do this in our Sign up to Signicat guide.In the Signicat Dashboard, set up an organisation and an account. Additionally, to use our Express service, you will need to set up a domain.
Our recommendation
We advise you to create a sandbox account to test our solutions before implementing them in production.
# Accessing the Electronic Signing solutions
To access the Electronic Signing solutions, you need to create an API client. You can find out how to do this in our guide on Accessing Signicat API products.
Once you have set up an API client, add
Signaturein the Permissions tab of your API client.Important
If you cannot access the Permissions tab, this means that you do not have the correct role to manage permissions for your organisation. In this case we need to prepare your account for our Electronic Signing solutions by giving you the correct permissions. To do this, please contact us at support@signicat.com.
To access the Electronic Signing APIs, you must use client credentials (client ID and secret) provided by Signicat. To obtain your own client credentials, see the general step-by-step guide, Accessing API products.
Use the client credentials you obtained in the previous step to obtain an access token. For details on how to do this, see the general section, Obtaining an access token.
When you have received the access token, you can use it in all requests to the Electronic Signing APIs (as the HTTP Bearer authentication header).
# Differences between our old and new platforms
Our new platform introduces new endpoints for our established products:
| API | new API URL | old API URL |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise Sign API REST | https://api.signicat.com/enterprise/sign | https://id.signicat.com/sign |
| Express Signature API REST | https://api.signicat.com/express/sign | https://api.signicat.io/signature |
| Enterprise SOAP web services gateway | https://api.signicat.com/enterprise/ws/ | https://id.signicat.com/ws |
For more information on differences between our old and new platforms, take a look at our migration guides, which provide an overview of the changes.
Important
Our Enterprise SOAP web services are available to existing customers only. If you are working on a new integration or are planning to upgrade from an older version of our DocumentService, PackagingService or ArchiveService SOAP APIs, we strongly recommend that you use our RESTful Sign API instead.
# API reference
Explore our API reference documentation to look up all API endpoints and properties as well as view sample requests and responses.
# Guides
# Quick start guides
See our quick start guides for our Enterprise and Express APIs.
# Migration guides
For more information on differences between our old and new platforms, take a look at our migration guides, which provide an overview of the changes.