SWITCHsign

Your electronic signature – easy, quick and legally binding.

SWITCHsign: your electronic signature

Employees, students, participants and suppliers expect digital processes – paper-free and without media interruptions. SWITCHsign reduces the time you spend concluding contracts, approvals and other agreements from days to mere minutes, which in turn saves you effort and costs.

Universities are using SWITCHsign to eliminate the time-consuming handling of paper documents such as orders, enrolment confirmations, purchasing contracts, official documents and research agreements.

It accelerates these processes, ensuring maximum flexibility and control, and doing away with contract conclusion delays resulting from late signatures.

Is your institution still collecting signatures the old way? Switch to SWITCHsign today and sign documents with your electronic signature – it’s easy, quick and legally binding. The service runs on all modern browsers and devices with no additional software hardware or plug-ins required.

Your benefits with SWITCHsign at a glance

Easy

Time-saving, paper-free processes without media interruptions, for employees, students, partners and suppliers.

Quick

All parties can access the current document within seconds and sign it with just a few clicks.

Efficient

More efficient processes help reduce your administrative workload.

Legally binding

Accepted standards for greater legal security.

Secure

All data is processed in data centres in Switzerland under the control of SWITCH.

Independent

You can sign your documents from any place and device, at any time.

Software-as-a-service

SWITCHsign is a software-as-a-service solution, so it’s easy to integrate into your organisation. The intuitive user experience works across all modern browsers and devices, with no additional software, hardware or plug-ins required. With the SWITCH edu-ID integrated, you don’t need special user accounts for users or admin.

Technology provider Certifaction

Certifaction operates the technology behind SWITCHsign. Certifaction is a Swiss software start-up based in Zurich. Its e-signing solution completely safeguards its users’ privacy and is already being used in over ten countries.

Simple, professional or qualified signature

The federal law on electronic signatures – ZertES – and the EU regulation eIDAS distinguish between different quality levels. These differ in terms of applications and validity.

SWITCHsign distinguishes between a simple electronic signature (SES) and qualified electronic signature (QES) as defined by ZertES and eIDAS. It also offers an additional option that is not regulated but has greater evidential value – the professional electronic signature (PES). Users are identified for this purpose via Auto-Ident, which is a key component of SWITCHsign.

A qualified electronic signature with SWITCHsign meets either the requirements of the federal law on electronic signatures – ZertES – or the EU regulation eIDAS.

	Simple electronic signature (SES)	Professional electronic signature (PES)	Qualified electronic signature (QES)
Identification requirements	SWITCH edu-ID for users SWITCH edu-ID for signatories (optional)	Identification process	SWITCH edu-ID and additional registration with Swisscom
Application	Documents where the written form is not required, with minimal liability risk	Documents where the written form is not required, with low liability risk	Documents where the written form is required or with high liability risk
Examples	Internal organisational documents Purchase orders Orders, contracts Informational memos Announcements	Purchase orders Orders, contracts	Innosuisse research agreements Official documents Audit reports Opening of bank accounts Terminations

What makes SWITCHsign unique

Integration of the SWITCH edu-ID

Your SWITCHsign authentication uses the SWITCH edu-ID.

Privacy by Design

The service is operated in data centres in Switzerland with minimum data release.

SWITCH Community

Networking with relevant contacts in the education, research and innovation community.

Digitalisation hotspot

Collaborative development of the service roadmap by the community, and a user forum which provides inspiration for further digitalisation projects in the university sector.

Annual savings of EUR 150,000

The University of Tartu in Estonia has a student body of 18,000. When the university interacts with students, it relies entirely on electronic signatures rather than pen and paper. To great success – the uni’s administration department estimates that this saves them EUR 12,190 per month.

More info

Roles and functions

Admin

Users

Signatories

They are the points of contact for SWITCH for anything related to SWITCHsign.

Admins can activate SWITCHsign for members of their own organisation with just a few clicks.
Report functions provide an overview of service use.
Responsible for first-level support to local users, with support cases escalated to second-level support at SWITCHsign.

They are responsible for managing documents, in particular for downloads and archiving signed documents.

Users can upload documents and assign them to signatories within and outside of their own organisation with just a few clicks. They start the signature workflow.
They monitor the ongoing and completed workflow status in SWITCHsign to issue reminders to signatories who have not yet signed.

They are responsible for providing the signature and its significance in the context of the signed document.

Users send emails to invite signatories to sign documents on the SWITCHsign platform; where necessary, users guide signatories through an identification and signature process.
They then download fully signed documents from the platform.

Read the fact sheet

All you need to know about SWITCHsign at a glance.

Download

Do you have any further questions? We’ll be happy to help.

Our team is ready to advise and lend a hand in implementation, training and technical matters.

For information in German, English and Italian:

Diego-Tres

Diego Tres
Community Account Manager
+41 44 268 16 57

Contact

For information in French, English and Italian:

Laurent_Combe

Laurent Combe
Community Account Manager
+41 44 253 98 24