E-sign API Call Service IntroductionIntegrating e-Signature service as need

1.Demand Analysis

At present, the paperless office almost has been implemented in government agencies and large enterprises. The invoice and various types of documents have already gone paperless, even the signing of paper contracts is rapidly spreading to the signing of electronic contracts. Most countries government is vigorously promoting and popularizing the e-government service for all services, enterprises of all sizes are also building and improving various management systems to be paperless. However, if there is no digital signature for the e-documents or e-contracts, then we cannot guarantee the e-documents are trusted, and cannot guarantee that they haven’t been tampered with or haven’t been counterfeited illegally, then the legal effect of the e-documents and e-contract cannot be guaranteed.

In other words, currently the only thing needs to do for the paperless transformation is to make the paperless trusted and secure. To make the e-documents generated by management systems be trusted, the e-documents should have a digital signature. However, in order to digitally sign the e-documents, users must apply for a PDF signing certificate from a CA and purchase a cryptographic hardware security module (HSM) in accordance with the Adobe technical requirements to ensure the security of the signing certificate, and it is necessary to provide a secure infrastructure for HSM and the corresponding security control measures, etc..

In addition, it is also need the engineers who knows how to generate the HASH of the PDF file to be signed, how to use the signing certificate to sign the HASH, how to call the timestamp service to obtain the timestamp signature that need to purchase the timestamp call service, and how to call the certificate revocation list data to obtain LTV data to ensure the long term validation of the signature and so on. Therefore, it is not an easy task to achieve a digital signature for a trusted paperless of the e-document. This is why you can see too many e-documents don’t have digital signature.

2.MeSign Solution

Users can use MeSign APP to digitally sign the e-documents and the e-contracts manually, but for large enterprises including government agencies and public institutions, they have a large number of documents or contracts need to be signed every day and they require to integrate the digital signature into the management systems to achieve fully automatic e-document signing and e-contract signing.

For this requirement, MeSign Technology provide E-sign API Call service, so that users do not need to apply for a PDF signing certificate from a CA, do not need to purchase expensive HSM, do not need to upgrade their existing infrastructures, do not need to understand how to digitally sign PDF file using the signing certificate, do not need to purchase timestamping service and do not need to know how to obtain the LTV data. What they only need to do is to generate the HASH of PDF file to be signed, and call E-sign API Call services to automatically return the signed data including the file signature data, timestamp signature data and LTV data, then write the returned signed data into the PDF file according to the PDF signature standards to complete the document signature. As shown in the below diagram.

The E-sign API includes two function API, one if E-sign API for contract signing, another one is E-sign API for document signing. Please call different E-sign API according to different signing requirements. To sign an electronic contract, you need to call the signer's identity validation API and signing process control API.

To implement digital signature for documents or contracts, users need to have the PDF file signature programming capabilities to interface with E-sign API, must know how to generate the HASH of the PDF file to be signed, and know how to write the returned signed data into the PDF file. If the user does not have these PDF file signature programming capabilities or want to fast deploy e-signature service, user can purchase MeSign e-Signature System (software), as shown in the below diagram.

The business management systems locally dock to the MeSign e-Signature System. It only needs to post the PDF file to be signed generated by the management system to the e-Signature System. The e-Signature System is responsible for generating the signing request data and post it to E-sign API to get the signed data, then the e-Signature System will write the returned signed data to the PDF file to complete the PDF file signing, and finally return the signed PDF file to the business management system.

3.How to call E-Sign API

Users that want to use E-sign API Call service, must purchase MeSign Business Pro Edition service including Trusted Identity Validation service, Document D-signature service or Contract E-signature service according to the business needs, and also need to buy the E-sign API call time.

After purchasing the wanted service and completing the identity validation, the user can log into MeSign account, and find the "MeSign Service" menu to download the related service manuals of E-sign API Call. These documents provide detailed instructions on how to call the API, so that the user can immediately program to call the API according to the guide to start the digital signing of the PDF files and integrate it into their own business management systems. Each account provides 100 times free API call services for testing and debugging the API call.

E-sign API Call Service charges US$0.49 per call, which saves cost for users on various investments, such as the purchasing for document signing certificate, related hardware HSM and software purchasing, the facility upgrade and the timestamping service, etc. The only cost for the users is the API call times fee, which greatly save the cost for trusted paperless upgrade and reconstruction. This is a pay-as-you-go API services, you can start to use this API service immediately after paying it, without waiting for the time on equipment purchasing and equipment deployment. Users can purchase the E-sign API call times at any time according to their business needs, and we also provide discounts for large quantity orders.

The users calling E-sign API docking business management system can not only complete the digitally signing e-documents automatically, such as the signing of the organization’s official announcements, internal or external publications, but also can complete the digitally signing e-contracts automatically including the signing of electronic employment agreement, to fully realize the trusted paperless application of all types of e-documents involved in the enterprise’s business management. All signed contracts and e-documents have global legal effect and global trusted by Adobe.

Please note that whether it is the user to program to call the E-sign API by their own, or they use the MeSign e-Signature System to call the E-sign API, E-sign API Call only accept the HASH of the original document to be signed that submitted by the user, and we do not accept the original document, to protect the personal privacy information or business secrets. It is because we always take the protection of our users’ confidential information as the top priority of all solutions. This is also the privacy protection bottom line we set for all solutions, which makes our Document D-signature service and Contract E-signature service different from our competitors.

If you want to know more about the solution of deploying E-sign API calling system or MeSign e-Signature System, which makes your business confidential information does not need to leave the internal management system, click here for more details.