Toronto-based notary services provider NotaryPro has raised $646,415 CAD ($500,000 USD) in an all-equity and all-primary seed round that closed in July.
NotaryPro said the financing was led by a California-based investment group, though it did not disclose the investor’s name. The company also did not identify the other investors that participated in the round, BetaKit has reached out for more details.
Founded in 2016 by CEO Robert Onley, NotaryPro provides online and in-person notary public and commissioner of oath services. Its notary discovery solution matches clients with in-person notaries in their community, in addition to the company’s digital signing solutions. The company said it has a network of over 200 notaries located across Canada, along with nine staff members to run the core of the business.
NotaryPro claims to have served more than 100,000 clients across Canada and the United States (US) in the last three years, including the University of Toronto, Trellis, IFAW, Clear Estate, and Titan Research.
According to NotaryPro, it is actively growing its market share across Canada, the US, and the Commonwealth through sales and marketing initiatives slotted through the end of this year and the beginning of 2023.
The COVID-19 pandemic spurred a wave of new regulations allowing for online notarization and digital signing in each Canadian province.
RELATED: How COVID-19 is highlighting the need for Canada to embrace digital signatures
As of May 2020, under Bill 190, the Ontario government amended the Notaries Act to establish that a notary public may “exercise his or her powers without being in the person’s physical presence.” This allowed for notaries to operate in the remote world brought about by COVID-19.
Last year, British Columbia became the first Canadian province to pass legislation for digital will signing, allowing for their electronic signing, video witnessing, and digital storage.
Along with these legal progressions, the rapid adoption of digital signatures during the pandemic became a major catalyst for NotaryPro’s rapid growth, according to the company.
As in-person gathering restrictions have lifted, people continue to use online notary services to process documents. With the digital signature sector projected to reach a valuation of $35.03 billion USD by 2029, NotaryPro said it is focused on expanding its technological capabilities to tap into this growing market.
This latest addition of capital is earmarked for the refinement of its online notarization platform, according to NotaryPro.
Featured image from DocuSign via Unsplash.
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