ICP-Brasil or a simple signature: which does your contract need?
Not every document calls for a digital certificate, and picking the wrong level costs you either way — in risk, or in friction with the customer.
There are two ways to get this wrong. The first is demanding an ICP-Brasil certificate for everything: the customer does not have one, does not want to buy one, and the contract stalls. The second is sending a click-to-accept for a half-million-real deal. Almost all Brazilian commerce sits between those extremes.
What really changes between the levels
The difference is not only technical, it is about the burden of proof. With the signer's own ICP-Brasil certificate, the law presumes it was them. Whoever disagrees has to prove otherwise. At the other levels there is no such presumption: if it is challenged, the party presenting the document shows the evidence.
So the useful question is not "which is safer", but: how likely is this contract to be challenged, and what does it cost if it is?
A practical rule of thumb
- Simple signature — terms of use, internal confirmations, low-value documents with a low chance of dispute.
- Advanced signature — most commercial contracts: supply, services, leases, amendments, accepted proposals. This is where the cost/benefit is best.
- Qualified signature — when the law requires it, when the other side requires it, or when the value is high enough that the legal presumption is worth the friction.
Friction is a real cost
Every extra step in signing drops the completion rate. Asking a customer to buy a certificate, install software and create an account is three steps that strand a lot of contracts halfway. A well-built advanced signature, with a link and a code, is signed in minutes on a phone — which is why it became the market standard.
The middle ground almost nobody uses
You can have both: an advanced signature for the signer and the platform's ICP-Brasil seal on the final document. The customer needs no certificate at all, and the file still comes out with a cryptographic lock that exposes any later change.
That is exactly how Verum Sign works, and what we recommend for most commercial contracts.
How to check what you received
Ask for — or check yourself — three things: whether the PDF opens with a valid seal in the reader, whether there is a public verification code, and whether the trail shows timestamps from an official source. If any of the three is missing, the document is still valid, but it proves less than it could.