Apostille Service

Company Notary offers a professional mobile notary service. We can come to your premises or meet you at any other agreed location. We are quick and well prepared. We can process your document(s) even before the arranged meeting date to make the process as convenient and efficient as possible.

Check whether this type of document authorisation is what you need with our free notary wizard tool.

Apostille Stamp

Our apostille stamp is the equivalent of a notary seal, but for documents destined for countries that require a higher level of authorisation. Why is this necessary?

Depending on the country of origin and destination (and the differences in their legal systems, diplomatic status etc.), sometimes notarisation is not in itself sufficient to fully confirm a document’s international validity. This drives the need for further authorisation measures, such as time consuming diplomatic or consular legalisation of documents.

Unfortunately getting involved with embassies or consular offices can severely complicate and delay overseas operations of many UK based businesses. Contact us for reliable and fast assistance.

Hague Convention Apostille

To minimise the complexity of certification requirements for foreign public documents, some countries came together to curb down the “red tape”. Thus, The Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement for Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents of 5 October 1961 was signed (see its full text).

This agreement’s signatories agreed that a special recognised authorisation method would be enough to confirm validity of documents. That is why the Hague Convention countries* now accept the apostille stamp and certificate as sufficient validity of documents and their execution.

* Use our free tool (see link above and top right of this page) to check if your target country is part of the treaty.

FCO Apostille

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office apostille (FCO apostille) is a authentication of the legal professional who has the power to authorise documents for all the countries that signed the convention.

To make sure The Hague Convention agreement is reliable only one competent authority within each country can grant that status. In in England and Wales this is the Legalisation Office of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), based in London and Milton Keynes.

Apostille Certification

We can quickly establish if apostille certificate will be sufficient to certify your documents for particular country. We check the exact requirements and prepare what is needed to secure the necessary level of authorisation.

Once completed, your document(s) bearing Company Notary’s stamp will be recognized in the receiving country without the need for additional legalisation (i.e. the authority receiving the apostilled document should accept the seals or signatures as true and valid without requesting further evidence or proof).

Apostille Documents

See the types of documents that usually need authorisation for international use here.