Are electronic signatures legally valid in Brazil?
They are — and the law that says so dates from 2001. What changed in 2020 was the split into three levels. Here is which one your contract needs.
It is almost always the first question, and the short answer is yes. The doubt usually comes from mixing up two different things: whether the document is valid, and how easy it is to prove in court.
The general rule dates from 2001
Provisional Measure 2.200-2, from 2001, created ICP-Brasil and established that signed electronic documents are valid. It says two important things. First: signatures made with an ICP-Brasil certificate are presumed authentic with respect to the signer. Second, and this is the part most people miss: other means of proving authorship are also valid, as long as the parties accept them.
In other words, Brazilian law never required a digital certificate for every contract. It gave an evidentiary shortcut to those who use one — and left the rest open.
Law 14.063 sorted it into three levels
In 2020, Law 14.063 classified electronic signatures into three types:
- Simple — identifies the signer and attaches data to the document. Click-to-accept, e-mail confirmation.
- Advanced — uses means that identify the signer with reasonable certainty, detect any later change, and bind the signature uniquely to the document.
- Qualified — uses the signer's own ICP-Brasil certificate. It carries the heaviest evidentiary weight.
For everyday commercial practice — supply agreements, service contracts, leases, amendments — advanced signatures do the job. Qualified signatures are required in specific cases, such as transfers of real property and certain dealings with public bodies.
What actually makes a signature advanced
Calling it advanced is not enough. What holds up as evidence is the set of records the platform keeps and can produce later:
- Signer identification through a channel separate from the document — a code sent to their e-mail or phone.
- A record of IP, city, carrier and the time of each step, taken from an official time source rather than the computer's clock.
- Verifiable integrity: any change to the file after signing must be detectable.
- An audit trail that cannot be quietly edited.
Where the platform's seal fits in
Even with an advanced signature, the platform can seal the final document with its own ICP-Brasil certificate. That does not turn the signature into a qualified one — the person is still the signer, not the platform. What the seal does is freeze the file: from then on, any change breaks the seal and shows up in the PDF reader.
It is one more layer of proof, and it is cheap to have. At Verum Sign every document comes out sealed, including the five in the free trial.
And if the other side disputes it?
Then what counts is what you can show. A PDF with an intact seal, a chained trail with official timestamps, the IP and carrier of whoever signed, and a public code anyone can check without asking you — that combination is hard to pull apart.
The reverse is also true: a click-to-accept, with no code, no trail and no seal, is worth less precisely because it proves less.