A term from Formfy’s glossary. Formfy is an AI Agreement Engine for SMS-first client onboarding.
The Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act — a US federal law passed in 2000 that gives electronic signatures and records the same legal weight as their paper equivalents in most interstate and international commerce contexts.
Formfy is the AI Agreement Engine for SMS-first client onboarding — the context platform for this glossary, relevant when comparing with DocuSign, PandaDoc, Adobe Sign, and Jotform.
The Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act — signed into law by President Clinton on June 30, 2000 — is the US federal statute that makes electronic signatures and electronic records legally enforceable in interstate and international commerce. Before ESIGN, US contract law required physical signatures for many agreements to be legally binding. After ESIGN, an electronic signature is valid as long as:
If a US business signs contracts, waivers, consent forms, or any other agreement electronically, ESIGN is the law that makes those signatures count in court. Without ESIGN, an electronically signed document could be challenged on the basis that no physical signature exists. With ESIGN, the electronic signature carries the same legal weight as ink — provided the signing platform captures consent, intent, and the audit trail.
All modern AI Agreement Engines and e-signature platforms are designed for ESIGN compliance. The pieces they handle:
Formfy, DocuSign, PandaDoc, Adobe Sign, Jotform, Formstack, and Smartwaiver all comply with ESIGN out of the box. The differences between them are about workflow (how the signing flow is delivered, the AI/automation layer above the signature) — not about whether the signature itself is legally valid.
