Never charge for the seal. Trusted timestamps can be had for nothing — the authorities used here are European public and research bodies that do not charge for them. A customer billed per sealed record will eventually discover that, and at that moment the whole relationship looks different. So sealing is free, always, for every record, and anything paid has to justify itself on something else.
Never tier on integrity. Every record is equally verifiable at every level. A higher tier never buys a better seal — only external standing, longer retention, or wider scope. That is not a principle, it is self-defence. The moment a customer believes a cheaper tier is less verifiable, the question stops being “is this record sound?” and becomes “which tier was this one on?”. Once a reader has to ask that, no record in the system means anything on its own. One weak tier devalues every other.
Never pass retail pricing through. Timestamps bought one at a time cost roughly ten times what they cost bought in volume. An organisation sealing a couple of hundred records a month would pay hundreds at retail and tens at bulk rates. Simply reselling at retail would add cost and no value, and the customer would be better off going direct. Contracting in volume is what makes this a service instead of a mark-up.
Every record sealed, signed under your organisation’s own identity, freely timestamped, and checkable by anyone offline — including by someone who does not use our software and never intends to.
Status: built, deployed and switched on.
What it licenses you to say: “Sealed, dated, independently checkable.” No legal claim at all — and saying so is the point. A free timestamp carries no statutory presumption in any jurisdiction. What it carries is a date that cannot be moved and a signature that can be checked against a key you publish.
Why it is free, and stays free. See the first rule above. Nobody has to buy anything to get a checkable record, and the paid tiers sit above that rather than gating it.
Nominated records would additionally carry a qualified European timestamp and the statutory presumption that comes with it, sold as a monthly allowance of sealed records rather than per stamp.
Status: the interface is built; no qualified authority is contracted. The timestamps in use today are free and unqualified. Until a qualified provider is under contract, this tier does not exist as something you can buy, and no record carries the presumption.
What it would license you to say: “Carries the EU statutory presumption.” With the jurisdiction named, every single time — see the note on reach below.
Key control moves to your organisation, with a retention commitment and a named attestation you can put in front of a court, an auditor or a regulator.
Status: the key-custody work is under way and not finished.
Who this is for. Not someone wondering whether a photograph is real. A body that has to prove later what it decided and when — a committee facing a challenge to a decision, a trust facing an auditor, an incorporated society whose constitution is questioned years after the vote. That body does not need a better seal; T0 already gave it one. What it needs is somebody standing behind the arrangement: keys it holds itself, a commitment about how long records are kept and what happens if the service ends, and an attestation with a name on it.
That is staff time and a retention obligation rather than stamps, which is why it prices like professional services rather than like software. It competes with notarisation and evidence-capture services, not with free.
A qualified European timestamp is presumed accurate as to its time, and as to the integrity of the data bound to it, with the burden falling on whoever disputes it (eIDAS, Article 41(2)). Qualified status operates across the Union through the trusted-list regime rather than through that article — Article 41’s own recognition paragraph was deleted when eIDAS was amended in 2024.
That presumption does not reach New Zealand. Recognition of a third country’s trust services requires a decision at European level — an agreement with the Union, or a Commission implementing act — and neither is in place here. In a New Zealand forum a European qualified timestamp is persuasive evidence and nothing more.
New Zealand has a presumption of its own, and it is a different instrument — it attaches to an electronic signature rather than to a timestamp, and it carries a condition about who controls the signing means. The essay sets that out in full. The short version for this page: the two are not interchangeable, we will not describe one as though it were the other, and any tier sold on the strength of a European instrument will say so.
⚖️ Whose opinion this is, and whose it is not
The statutory material on this page describes what the named legislation says, and cites it so you can read the source instead of trusting a vendor’s summary. It is not legal advice, not a legal opinion, and not the beginning of one.
We do not provide legal opinion on the use of anything we build, and we will not start. That is a standing position. This is used in more than one country; we make no claim to understand the legal context of every nation and will not pretend to acquire it. The two jurisdictions named here are named because their rules have been read and because they differ from each other. If you are somewhere else, assume nothing here reaches you.
Most buyers never need to think about any of it. If you want records dated, signed and checkable, T0 does that and no presumption is involved either way.
One case is different: buying because you intend to rely on a presumption in a dispute. Then the answer depends on your arrangements, your forum, your evidence and your country, and it comes from your own lawyer — before you buy, not after. No product gives you a presumption. A forum grants one, or it does not.
Two additions are on the map and neither is built.
Remote online notarisation — a notarial act performed over a video session, already a paid, regulated service in several jurisdictions at roughly the price of a professional hour.
Evidence-grade web capture — a fixed, attested snapshot of a page as it appeared at a moment, which is what litigators currently buy by subscription.
Both would extend the mark from this is the record we hold to this is the record, and here is a third party who will stand behind how it was taken. Both are additive. Neither changes anything above them, and neither is promised on a date.
It does not prevent anyone from taking your material. It makes the taking contestable afterwards, by producing a dated, signed, independently checkable record that predates the appropriation. That is worth a great deal, and it is not a shield.
If a page like this ever starts implying otherwise, the essay it belongs to has been wasted.