Terms of service

The most important thing in this document

e-Selyo does not notarize anything. A notarial act is performed by an Electronic Notary Public commissioned by the Supreme Court, exercising their own professional judgement and their own authority. We provide the facility they use to do it: the identity checks, the session, the document handling, the register, the seal and the verification.

This is not a disclaimer. It determines several things you should know:

• A notary may refuse. If they are not satisfied of your identity, of your understanding, or that you are acting freely — or if they suspect fraud — they must refuse, and we will not press them to do otherwise. A refusal costs the notary nothing on this platform, deliberately, so that the incentive to notarize never comes from us.
• The notarial act is between you and the notary. Its validity, its legal effect, and any professional liability for it are theirs, governed by the rules of the Supreme Court and the Code of Professional Responsibility and Accountability.
• We do not give legal advice. Nothing on this platform tells you which act you need, whether your document is sound, or what it will achieve. The act types are described so you can recognise the one your document asks for — that is not advice.

Your account

You must give accurate information and keep your credentials to yourself. You are responsible for what is done through your account. Tell us immediately if you think somebody else has access to it.

You must be able to enter into a contract, and you must be the person whose identity is verified on the account. Verifying somebody else’s identity as your own, or letting another person use your verified account, is fraud on the notary as well as a breach of these terms.

Identity verification

Before your first notarial act you must complete an identity check against a government ID with a liveness scan, and repeat a shorter check immediately before each session. This is required by the Supreme Court’s rules on remote notarization, not by us. You consent to the biometric processing it involves; what happens to that data is set out in the privacy notice.

The session

A remote notarial session is recorded, and the recording is retained as part of the notarial record for ten years. You cannot opt out of the recording and proceed with the act — the rules require it.

You must be physically within the Philippines, and your notary must be commissioned where you are. We check both. A session on a VPN, a proxy or Tor will be refused.

Your documents

You keep every right in the documents you upload. You give us permission to store, process and transmit them only so far as performing and recording the notarial act requires.

You must not upload a document that:

• you have no right to submit for notarization;
• you know to be false, forged or altered;
• contains malware.

A notarized document cannot be deleted, by you or by us. It is a notarial record. This is explained more fully in the privacy notice.

Fees

[TO BE COMPLETED — see the notice above]

What can be said now, because it is already true of the platform’s design:

• The notary’s professional fee is theirs, and is set by them. We do not set it, default it, suggest it, or take a share of it.
• Our fee is a flat fee for access to the facility, the same for a given act type regardless of which notary performs it or what they charge.
• You will see both, named separately and attributed to separate payees, before you authorise anything.

Refunds

[TO BE COMPLETED — see the notice above]

One principle already holds in the platform and will not change: a payment problem never invalidates a completed notarial act. Once the seal is affixed and the register entry written, the act stands whatever happens to the payment afterwards.

What we are responsible for

We are responsible for operating the facility with reasonable care: keeping your documents secure, keeping the records the rules require, and making the service available.

We are not responsible for:

• the notarial act itself, its validity or its legal effect — those belong to the notary;
• whether a third party, agency or registry accepts your notarized document;
• the contents of your document, or any consequence of what it says;
• a failure of your own internet connection, device, camera or microphone.

Availability

We do not promise uninterrupted service. Where a session fails for a technical reason, the act does not complete and you can start again — an incomplete act is never recorded as a completed one.

Suspension

We may suspend an account we reasonably believe is being used to commit fraud, to impersonate somebody, or in breach of these terms. Where we do, we will say why.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of the Philippines. Nothing in them limits any right you have under the Data Privacy Act of 2012 or your right to complain to the National Privacy Commission.

Changes

We will tell you before these terms change in a way that affects you. The date at the top is when this was last checked against the platform.

Contact

support@daloytechsolutions.com

Third-party data

This product includes GeoLite Data created by MaxMind, available from https://www.maxmind.com.

We use it to confirm that participants in a notarial session are located within the Philippines, as the rules on notarial practice require. The lookup happens on our own servers; your address is not sent to MaxMind or to anyone else, and the result is not shown to you or recorded in your document.