Signing the Future: How a Digital Incorporation Made eIDAS Real

When we transformed our partnership into a private limited company, I expected paper. A meeting with the notary, wet ink, a stamp. Instead, it all happened in a browser: uploads, video checks, and digital clicks that somehow carried legal force.

Only later did I realise I had just taken part in the European experiment with digital trust, the eIDAS framework, and that I had signed something without ever touching a pen.

Quick takeaways

• Identification and signature are two distinct acts: first who you are, then what you agree to.
• The signature’s power comes from its cryptographic trail, not its appearance.
• Qualified Trust Service Providers (QTSPs) give digital signatures the same legal weight as handwritten ones.
• Notaries, intermediaries, and state registries are now connected by secure digital chains.
• eIDAS quietly turns European bureaucracy into code — without losing its concern for proof and personhood.

1. A company born in the browser

Our process began at Firm24, an intermediary platform for digital incorporation.

The first step was a Know Your Customer check: we uploaded our identity documents and recorded a short video in the browser, confirming that the person on screen matched the ID.

That was the automated front end of trust, identity established before any signing took place.

Once the information was verified, the notary drafted the deeds.
We reviewed and signed them digitally through SignRequest, the familiar on-screen signature that records time, device, and IP address.

At first, I uploaded a photograph of my real, hand-drawn signature. It looked neat, recognisable, but the system declined it. What it wanted was the clunky version drawn with a mouse: ugly, but traceable. The platform trusted the event, not the image.

Only after everything was ready for formalisation did we have a live WhatsApp call with the notary’s office.

It wasn’t another ID check; the notary already had our identification from the Firm24 dossier. The conversation was brief, all it took was a human confirmation that we understood and agreed with the deed before it was officially signed.

Shortly after, the notary added their qualified digital signature and sent the deed electronically to the Chamber of Commerce.

A company was born, entirely in the browser.

2. What was really happening

It felt effortless, almost ordinary, but underneath, each step carried a specific legal and technical meaning:

The Firm24 stage handled identification, proving who we were.

The SignRequest stage captured our consent digitally.

The WhatsApp call reintroduced a brief human moment: not a check of documents, but a confirmation that we truly understood and agreed to the act of incorporation.

Finally, the notary’s qualified signature gave the deed its formal, cross-border legal force under eIDAS.

3. Trust as infrastructure

What struck me is how invisible trust has become.

We used to rely on rituals: paper, witnesses, stamps. In the digital process, trust is distributed across systems.

• Firm24 verified who we were - a human front door.
• The notary confirmed that we understood and agreed - legal assurance.
• The qualified trust provider sealed the deed - cryptographic proof.
• The Chamber of Commerce accepted it - institutional trust.

Once that final registration was complete, everything else fell neatly into place.
Our bank immediately recognised the new company and transferred the existing account without complication — no new signatures, no paper.

Setting up bookkeeping in MoneyBird was equally seamless, with the company data retrieved directly from the trade register.

Even the Tax Office followed automatically, issuing a new VAT number within days.

It was a glimpse of what a connected trust infrastructure can feel like: every authority drawing from the same verified record, without friction or duplication.
Each part replaces a physical step with a digital one, but the underlying logic remains: you prove your identity, express intent, and an authorised party validates it.

The difference is that these steps now happen within seconds, across secure servers rather than across desks.

4. From mark to mechanism

At some point I realised that the “signature” had ceased to be a mark altogether.
It was now an event: a timestamped record linking identity, intent, and document integrity.

Authenticity no longer comes from handwriting analysis but from cryptographic linkage.

It’s the system, not the symbol, that carries trust.

That shift has deep implications. It means that authority can now travel across borders. A Dutch qualified signature is valid in Finland, France, or Portugal.
It also means that European digital identity is no longer a convenience but it’s an essential building block of law, commerce, and citizenship.

5. Why this matters

Europe’s approach differs from the more laissez-faire systems elsewhere.
eIDAS doesn’t treat signatures as mere digital consent. It roots them in sovereign identity and regulated trust services, a deliberate attempt to build autonomy at the infrastructure level.

When we speak of digital sovereignty, this is what it looks like in practice: individuals and institutions bound by verifiable, portable proofs of identity.

In a way, the process revealed a cultural shift as much as a technical one.
The European state is learning to speak digital, and the notary is its interpreter.

Closing reflection

The most consequential signature of my professional life has no visual form.
It lives as metadata and mathematics: a timestamp, a certificate chain, a line in a European trust list.

Yet it feels reliable, even human, because every layer still asks the same questions that law has always asked: Who are you? What do you intend? Who witnesses it?

Bureaucracy hasn’t vanished; it has changed medium.
The ritual of signing now lives in code and that code, in Europe at least, still begins with identity.

Further reading

• EU eIDAS Regulation – official portal
• EU Trusted List Browser
• Dutch government overview (Rijksoverheid)

Understanding Digital Identity in the EU: eID, eIDAS, and the EUDI Wallet

This article serves as a reference point for further discussions on digital identity, authentication, and legitimisation in the EU.

Rob HoeijmakersRob Hoeijmakers