Remote online notarization provider Notarize has raised $130 million in its Series D funding round, the firm announced Thursday. 

Notarize, which lets users have their documents notarized without leaving home, has seen a 600% increase in revenue since March 2020, according to the company. Its platform uses automation techniques like optical character recognition (OCR) and barcode scanning to verify documents.  

The funding round was led by venture capital firm Canapi Ventures, and also included Citi Ventures, Wells Fargo and CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund. The Boston-based Notarize was founded in 2015, and has so far raised $213 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.  

Notarize has seen a rising demand for its digital notarization services during the pandemic.   

“When we came out of the gates as a company, there was so much interest,” Patrick Kinsel, chief executive of Notarize, told Bank Automation News. “And then there were just a lot of regulatory barriers,” he said.  

Kinsel said the regulatory barriers arose out of state and local regulations for online notary services, many of which have now been amended. During the last year, states like Texas, Missouri and Hawaii have amended their notary laws to allow remote notarizations. Much like other services that moved online in 2020, the pandemic pushed the needle and created significant demand for the products.  

In the last year, Notarize has inked deals with firms such as Stripe, Adobe, Dropbox, and Zillow and has also seen spikes in demand from the financial services, real estate and automobile sectors. Kinsel said the firm has been able to “accomplish legal clarity,” since early 2020, and has since focused on integrating its services with platforms that require notarized documents.  

“In terms of our core business, like real estate, the pandemic was just an incentive for people to do it right,” Kinsel said. He added that Notarize helps save people an average of 21 days of time and about $40. “When people do the work, and they automate and integrate, no one turns it off,” he said.  

Notarize currently has more than 1,000 legal notary public[s] available on its platform, and Kinsel said that going forward, according to his estimates, the platform will likely require more than 20,000 such officials during the next three to four years.  There are over 4.4 million registered notaries in the U.S., according to the National Notary Association’s 2017 census.  

Notary public officials can onboard themselves onto the company’s platform using its self-service route, or be onboarded by clients, like banks, that utilize its services.   

“Notarize is disrupting outdated business models and technologies, and there’s massive potential, particularly in the financial services space, as more companies will need to offer secure digital alternatives,” Neil Underwood, a partner at Canapi Ventures, said in a statement.  

Notarize said it will use the new funding to expand the platform and product, broaden business across key industries, and scale to serve enterprises of different sizes. “We’re hyper–focused right now, on serving and onboarding our clients so we can get every transaction and, and unlock that revenue,” Kinsel said.  

Bank Automation Ignite, on April 13-14, is the event for inspiring automation initiatives and investment in financial services. At the virtual event, financial services professionals can discover new use cases and technologies that are accelerating automation in banking. Learn more and register at www.BankAutomationIgnite.com.