Notarize, an eNotary service, wants to be the Stripe of legal documents

Notarizing paper mortgage documents sucks bad.

Last week, Notarize, a company that digitizes 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.