Singapore government rolls out digital signature service

Individuals and businesses in Singapore will soon be able to sign documents digitally using a new service on the government’s SingPass digital identity platform.

Called Sign with SingPass, the service is being rolled out by Assurity, a subsidiary of the Government Technology Agency (GovTech), together with eight digital signing application providers, including DocuSign, Adobe and Kofax.

GovTech said each digital signature is identifiable and cryptographically linked to the signer, while signed documents are platform agnostic and can be viewed with the user’s preferred system. No document data will be transferred during the digital signing process.

Assurity will also issue digital certificates for signatures created under the service. Upon Assurity’s accreditation under Singapore’s Electronic Transactions Act, signatures made with the service will be regarded as secure electronic signatures.

GovTech said the service will be useful for organisations and their customers amid the growing number of online transactions and will test the service with the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) for the digital signing of property caveats in the coming weeks.

Kok Ping Soon, chief executive of GovTech, said the high security document signing service will help businesses save cost and manpower by alleviating the need to manually verify physical paperwork.

Simon Dale, managing director for Adobe Southeast Asia, said the new service will not only enhance the last-mile citizen journey with agencies, businesses in the private sector – especially banks and telcos – will also be able to offer more secure and convenient processes for customers.

The digital signing service follows the recent launch of a face verification feature that lets SingPass users authenticate themselves during online transactions with approved entities. This is done by comparing a person’s presented facial image against facial biometrics maintained in the government’s biometrics database.

Both services are part of Singapore’s national digital identity project which aims to build a trusted digital identity ecosystem for citizens, public agencies and private sector companies.