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Credible Identifying Witness for Real Estate Transactions

Casey Birkholz
  • Updated

What Is a Credible Witness?

A Credible Identifying Witness (credible witness) is an individual who knows a signer and can verify the signer's identity.

A credible witness can be used if your signer does not have a US social security number (SSN). A US SSN is required to generate questions for Knowledge-Based Authentication (KBA). Learn more about KBA.

🎯Primary Audience: Title Agents & Lenders

A credible witness must:

  • Have a US social security number.
  • Go through KBA instead of the signer.
  • Visually and verbally affirm they can vouch for the signer’s identity once in the meeting.

Who Can Use a Credible Witness?

A credible witness is available only for eClosings / Remote Online Notarizations (RON). You must receive underwriter approval to use a credible witness as your identification method. 

The credible witness feature cannot be used for Hybrid closings.

This feature must be enabled by Proof. Please contact Customer Support at support@proof.com to request this feature for your account. If you were assigned a Customer Success Manager (CSM), work with your CSM.

How Does Credible Witness Work?

If your organization has the credible witness feature turned on, a modal appears directly below the modal to input the signer's information when you're creating a transaction. Credible witness defaults to "No" on each transaction. To add a credible witness to your transaction:

  • Mark the Yes radio button
  • Provide the witness’s name and email address
  • Phone number is optional

The signer receives an email informing them that their credible witness is listed and required to join the notary meeting.


The signer bypasses KBA and Credential Analysis.

The witness receives an email when the transaction is sent to the signer to inform them that they are listed as a credible witness and must join the signer in the notary meeting with their ID ready.

The credible witness must join using a separate device from the signer, even if co-located.

Credible witnesses can join meetings via a web browser using a computer or a mobile device such as a phone. (They cannot join via mobile app.) 

Once the signer initiates and joins a notary meeting, the credible witness receives another email informing them that the signer has started a notary meeting and prompting them to join.

The credible witness must pass KBA and credential analysis of their ID before joining the meeting.

When the witness joins the signer in the meeting, they can view the video feeds of the signer and Notary but do not have access to any documents or tools.  

The notary gets a notification advising them to join the meeting and informing them that the transaction requires a credible witness.

notary-modal.png

The Notary and the signer are blocked from performing any document actions until the credible witness joins the meeting and the Notary verifies their ID.

The Notary must administer an oath or affirmation that the credible witness personally knows the signer before starting the session with the signer. 

After swearing the oath or affirmation, the credible witness can leave the meeting. 

We're here to help! Please don’t hesitate to reach out to your Proof team with any questions about Proof Real Estate solutions.

To contact Support, click the Chat icon in the corner of your screen to start a chat with us, or send us an email at support@proof.com!

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