Table of Contents
What is Digital Signature certificate?
The digital certificate is the electronic form of Signature used to authenticate electronic documents. In modern technological development submission of government-related documents, tenders and certificates are made online, to avoid physically sending signed documents again to the respective department with physical signature on it. So when you need to file prescribed documents in online mode you will authenticate documents submitted online with the use of Digital signature certificate. And most of the government departments are migrating to electronic processing of applications and issuing the certificate in electronic form.
What are different classes of digital signature ?.
The digital signature is classified into classes based on the purpose for which it is used.
- Class 2 digital signature certificate for Income tax Filing.
- Class 2 for mca filing
- Class 2 for ESI, EPF
- Class 3 for import export code registration.
- Class 3 for E-Tender purpose.
- Dgft dsc for import-export processing.
Moreover, once you apply, it cannot be canceled and money cannot be returned because once your dealers start the process he will pay upfront and he will not get any refund if canceled or not processed completely.
System settings.
As per CCA regulations, digital signatures should be downloaded only to tokens and cannot be issued as pfx file anymore. All token which you will be getting in recent times will have autoplay facility so you can install the token drivers and start using it. apart from installing digital signature tokens to the system, the user of the digital signature should perform some additional settings as specified by the government portals. The digital signature will only work after properly configuring system settings.
What are the different brands ?
Most widely used digital signatures are N Code and E Mudhra, Capricorn . N code is most trusted brand for digital signature and one of the reason is government company and they were from the beginning of implementation.
Validity of Digital signature.
Digital signature comes with 2 years and 1-year validity and price difference between two years and one-year digital signature will be around 20 to 30 % so it is recommended to apply for 2 years for cost savings and to avoid submitting the application for next year.
How to apply
You can apply for digital signature with n code dealer in the prescribed form, digital signature certificate dealer will guide you through all process of SMS verification video verification etc. It will normally take about a day for completing digital signature application processing.
