Legal & Compliance

Last updated: 10 October 2026

Electronic signatures are recognised across Australia and New Zealand for the overwhelming majority of business documents. This page explains the legal foundation, how a SignSwifly envelope satisfies it, the evidence you hold if a signature is ever challenged — and, just as importantly, where electronic signing may not be the right tool.

The legal foundation

Australia (Commonwealth): the Electronic Transactions Act 1999 (Cth) provides that a transaction is not invalid merely because it took place electronically, and sets three conditions for a valid electronic signature — identification of the signer and their intention, reliability of the method, and consent of the parties to the method.
Australian states and territories: each has mirror legislation (for example the Electronic Transactions Act 2000 (NSW)) applying the same principles to state-law documents.
New Zealand: Part 4 of the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017 recognises electronic signatures on equivalent conditions.

How a SignSwifly envelope satisfies the conditions

Identification & intention — each signer receives a signing link personal to them at their own email address or mobile number (or opened for them on the sender's device when signing in person). It keeps working while the envelope is open, even after reminders, unless the sender corrects the address or our support team replaces it, and after everyone has signed it is also where they download their copies. The signer reviews the actual document, adopts their signature (drawn, typed or uploaded), and confirms completion. Every one of those moments is recorded with time, IP address and device.
Reliability of method — on completion the document is digitally sealed to the PAdES international standard with a cryptographic timestamp. Any change to a single byte afterwards makes the seal verifiably invalid in standard PDF readers.
Consent — before the document opens, each signer must accept an Electronic Record and Signature Disclosure, which they can read in full and print or save. It is provided by Au Fait Solutions Pty Ltd, which operates SignSwifly, and reads the same on every document: paper copies, withdrawing consent and questions about it go to SignSwifly support. The audit trail records its version and the SHA-256 fingerprint of the exact wording they accepted, and the certificate of completion names it. Signers who agreed to an earlier version — a shorter first disclosure, one given in the sender's own name, or one that named the sender — are named on the certificate as having accepted that one. Senders agree to electronic signing as the method in our Terms of Service (clause 4). From the version of 1 October 2026, each person who signs in to a SignSwifly workspace accepts those terms in the app before using it; before then, senders accepted the method by sending. For higher-stakes documents we recommend also recording consent in the document text itself.

The evidence you hold

Every completed envelope produces three artefacts, retained together: the sealed PDF; a certificate of completion listing every party, their actions, timestamps in UTC, IP addresses and the document's cryptographic fingerprints before and after sealing; and a hash-chained audit trail in which each event cryptographically covers the one before it — so an altered or deleted entry breaks the chain detectably. For envelopes completed from 27 September 2026, the certificate is sealed the same way as the PDF, the audit trail records the SHA-256 fingerprint of the certificate as issued, and every page of the sealed PDF and the certificate carries the envelope's SignSwifly ID, covered by the seal; earlier certificates and documents remain exactly as issued. Each “Date signed” field states the time zone it is written in — the signer's own (earlier documents used UTC) — so one can fall on a different day from the UTC time on the certificate. Sealed documents and certificates of completion are kept in write-once storage in Australian data centres for 7 years. A workspace's retention policy can stop them being handed out sooner but can't shorten that, and a legal hold stops the policy touching them.

Where e-signing may not be suitable

Some instruments carry statutory formality requirements that electronic signing may not satisfy in every jurisdiction — commonly wills and codicils, some powers of attorney, certain court documents and statutory declarations, and documents with in-person witnessing prescribed by statute. Requirements vary by state and change over time. Confirm the requirements for your document type before sending, and obtain legal advice for high-stakes instruments.

Witnessed documents

Witnessing rules are set by each state and territory, and differ from document to document. Many require the witness to see the signing in person. Some allow the witness to watch over an audio-visual link, with conditions: in New South Wales, for example, the witness must see the signing in real time, and the document must carry a statement of how it was witnessed.

SignSwifly lets a witness sign in person on the signer's device, straight after them, or afterwards on a link of their own. Before signing, the witness confirms that they saw the signer sign and, on their own link, says how (in person or by video call); the audit trail records what they said with their signature. SignSwifly doesn't record the signing itself, or the video call, and doesn't add a witnessing statement to the document: where the law asks for one, put it in the document, with a field for the witness to complete. A witness who signs on their own link afterwards is not evidence that they saw the signing. You're responsible for using a way of witnessing that the law accepts for your document.

A company signing under section 127(1) of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) signs through its officers — two directors, a director and the company secretary, or the sole director of a proprietary company — and needs no witness for that; the Act lets them sign electronically, deeds included. Deeds signed by individuals, and documents signed for trusts, partnerships or under a power of attorney, have rules of their own.

Sensible-use recommendations

Use each signer's personal email address or mobile, never a shared inbox or phone — the signing link is the identification.
Where a document needs a witness, check how the law lets it be witnessed before you choose between the witness signing on the signer's device and on a link of their own (see Witnessed documents).
Keep the sealed PDF and certificate of completion together; they are designed to be read as one evidentiary package, and the SignSwifly ID on every page shows which envelope a separated page belongs to.
For documents above your comfort threshold, have a lawyer confirm electronic execution is appropriate.

What SignSwifly is not

SignSwifly is signing infrastructure, not a law firm, and nothing on this site is legal advice. We don't independently verify government identity documents (signers are identified by a link sent to their own email or mobile), and we can't guarantee that any particular document will be enforceable in a particular jurisdiction — enforceability always depends on the document, the parties and the law that applies to them. Our responsibility is the integrity of the process and the evidence: who signed, what they signed, when, and that nothing changed afterwards. The starting templates in SignSwifly's template library are general drafts, not legal advice: read and change them, check them with your own adviser or official sources, and you're responsible for what you send. Where the law requires an official form, the library links to it instead (see the Terms of Service, clause 7, Template library).

Questions

We're happy to walk your legal or compliance team through the evidence design: contact us.