Kansas remote online notary: the state rule and your options

Mixing the labels into one “is video legal in Kansas?” checkout is how a Wichita owner pays a company sticker and still has a notary who never filed the remote notice, or treats a $25 company price as if Kansas had copied Oklahoma’s caps. Kansas video work is legal. It is not automatic on the day the commission arrives. It is also not one fee the statute and the Secretary of State page both print.

• Remote online notarization is a notarial act for a remotely located individual, by communication technology. Communication technology means a live connection you and the notary can see and hear. K.S.A. 53-5a15. The notary is physically in Kansas. You are not in the same room. The document is electronic.
• An in-person act is the ordinary job. You and the notary are in the same room. In-person electronic notarization, often called IPEN, is a different notice: the document is electronic, and you are still in the room. K.S.A. 53-5a21. That is not the video product.

The commission comes first. K.S.A. 53-5a22, as the revisor displayed it when we retrieved the page: the Secretary of State issues a commission for four years. The applicant is at least 18, a United States citizen, able to read and write English, and a Kansas resident, or a resident of a bordering state with a regular place of employment or practice in Kansas. The application includes an oath, a $12,000 surety bond or its functional equivalent, the official signature, an impression of the seal the notary will use, and an application fee of $10. A commission is not renewed by itself. A notary who wants another term applies again under the same section. A bond is a promise of money if the notary fails the duties of the office. It is not the price of your session. The handbook we read, updated July 20, 2022, says a separate bond is not required when the same applicant also registers for IPEN or for remote work.

The live Secretary of State screen does not print that $10. We are setting both versions down. We are not choosing which window a clerk will charge.

• K.S.A. 53-5a22(a)(5) and (f), retrieved for this page: application fee $10; commission term four years; bond $12,000. History line: Laws 2021, chapter 64, § 22. The section takes effect on and after January 1, 2022.
• Secretary of State, Notary, the steps we retrieved: upload the appointment and pay the $25 application fee by card. Renewal is the same steps. The fee is $25. The same page prints the bond as $12,000 under K.S.A. 53-5a22(2), which matches the statute’s bond amount and does not match the statute’s $10 application fee.
• Kansas Notary Handbook, updated July 20, 2022: the appointment steps say to mail or deliver Form NO and the application fee. The steps we read do not print a dollar for that fee. The bond line is $12,000 for applications on and after January 1, 2022.

The remote notice is a second gate, and the dollar for that gate is the one the regulation and the live page agree on. K.S.A. 53-5a15(f): before the first remote act, the notary notifies the Secretary of State, identifies the technologies, and provides evidence of the course and the passed exam. The information and services fee is an amount the Secretary determines, not to exceed $25. K.A.R. 7-43-11(b), Kansas Register Volume 41, Issue 41, October 13, 2022, effective October 28, 2022: that remote notice is $20. The live notary page prints the same $20. A separate sentence, K.A.R. 7-43-11(a), charges another $20 if the notary also notifies the Secretary that the notary will perform notarial acts on electronic records while the signer is in the room. That second $20 is the IPEN notice under K.S.A. 53-5a21, which has its own “not to exceed $25” ceiling. A video session is the remote notice. It is not automatically the in-room electronic notice.

NNA’s Kansas remote-notary how-to, labeled secondary, prints the remote registration cost as $25. That figure matches the statute’s ceiling. It does not match K.A.R. 7-43-11(b) or the $20 on the live Secretary of State page. We cite NNA for the sentence and we label it secondary. We will not treat $25 as the remote notice the office’s own page prints.

The course is the Secretary’s, and the page we read says it costs nothing. K.S.A. 53-5a23: before the first notarial act on an electronic record, the notary passes an examination the Secretary of State, or an entity the Secretary approves, administers. The course covers the laws, rules, procedures, and ethics for notarial acts on electronic records. K.A.R. 7-43-9: the notary may take the exam as many times as needed to pass, and must send proof of the passing score with the notice. The handbook says the training and the exam are on the Secretary’s website at no cost, and that a notary who will not do IPEN or remote work may still take them. We did not read a second paid class roster in the statute or on the notary page. The gate we read is the commission, the free course and exam, a provider on the office’s list, Form NC, and the $20 remote fee.

The authorization runs with the commission, and a renewal does not carry it forward by silence. K.A.R. 7-43-8(c): authority to perform notarial acts on electronic records, or for remotely located individuals, is concurrent with the commission and expires on the same date. K.A.R. 7-43-12(c): when the notary renews, the notary also submits a notification and the appropriate fee if the notary intends to keep performing those acts. The live notary page says a remote registration runs concurrent with the four-year commission. It does not, in the remote section we read, restate the renewal sentence. The regulation does. Oklahoma’s remote chapter is harsher on the label and tighter on the price: a $25 Secretary of State authorization ends when the commission ends and does not renew with it, an in-person act is capped at $5, and a remote act is capped at $25. Kansas also wants a fresh remote notice when the commission is renewed. Kansas does not cap the act.

The technology is a roster the Secretary publishes, not a sentence that every checkout brand is already approved for the notary on your screen. The notary page says the notary must choose an approved remote provider that is on file with the Secretary of State, and it links a RON/IPEN provider list. That list, revised June 3, 2026, is a table of technology providers, the service each one offers, and an approval period. K.A.R. 7-43-21(c): communication technology that the provider verifies, under penalty of perjury, as meeting the rule shall be approved by the Secretary. K.A.R. 7-43-22: the notary may use a provider that has submitted that evidence to the Secretary and to the notary. A provider applies with the office. The June 3, 2026 list is the roster that results. It is not a ranking of which company a signer should hire, and it is not a guide that disclaims approval. Proof, NotaryLive, OneNotary, and Blue Notary appear on that list for remote work. A checkout that shows one of those names is the company’s screen. It is not a statement that this notary named that provider on Form NC for this commission term.

Read the fee rule before you treat a company price as Kansas law. K.A.R. 7-43-16: a notary may charge for a notarial act on a record you can hold, on an electronic record, or for a remotely located individual. If the notary charges, the fee is disclosed and agreed before the act, collected when the act is performed, and written in the journal. The notary tells you the fee is permitted and is not required by state law or regulation. The Secretary of State notary page restates those four points and cites the same regulation. The handbook says state law does not prohibit a fee and points at the same rule. We did not read a dollar maximum in K.S.A. 53-5a15, 53-5a20, 53-5a21, or 53-5a22. Oklahoma’s $5 and $25 caps are not Kansas numbers. A company sticker near $25 can be the company’s price. It is not a Kansas cap, and it is not the $10 or $25 commission fee, and it is not the $20 remote notice.

Where you may sit is K.S.A. 53-5a15, and the notary’s chair is narrower than yours. The notary is located in Kansas and has already notified the Secretary. You may be in Kansas. You may be outside Kansas but still inside the United States. You may be outside the United States only if the record is to be filed with or relates to a matter before a public official, court, governmental entity, or other entity subject to United States jurisdiction, or involves property in the United States or a transaction substantially connected with the United States, and the act of making the statement or signing is not prohibited by the foreign state where you are. K.A.R. 7-43-20(b) states the notary’s limit in one line: the notary shall not perform the remote act if the notary is not physically located in Kansas. The handbook says the same thing, including for a notary who lives in a bordering state and holds a Kansas commission. The commission does not travel with that notary across the state line.

The ID check has three doors, and the quiz door has numbers. K.S.A. 53-5a15(b): the notary may rely on personal knowledge of you; or on the oath or affirmation of a credible witness appearing before the notary; or on satisfactory evidence from at least two different types of identity proofing. Personal knowledge means dealings that give reasonable certainty you are who you claim to be. Identity proofing, in the statute’s words, is a process or service by which a third person gives the notary a way to verify a remote signer by a review of personal information from public or private data sources. A credible witness is a person who knows you and will swear to that. K.S.A. 53-5a07: a passport, a driver’s license, a government nondriver identification card, or another government identification with your signature and photograph may be expired, but not by more than three years.

K.A.R. 7-43-18 is the rule for the door that is not personal knowledge and not the credible-witness path in K.S.A. 53-5a07(b)(2). It calls that door a multifactor authentication procedure. Credential analysis is a check, by automated software, that the identification is real: the security features are intact, the credential is not fraudulent or modified, and details are confirmed against the issuer or another authoritative source when that is available. The notary then compares the photo on the identification with the person on the live connection. The second type is knowledge-based authentication (KBA): a quiz of at least five questions drawn from your personal history or identity. The rule prints the quiz: at least five answer choices each; at least 80 percent correct; all questions answered within two minutes; one retake within 24 hours, with at least 40 percent of the questions replaced; no third try with the same notary inside 24 hours of the second failure; and the notary must not see or record the questions or answers. The results, pass or fail, are given to the notary. If you leave the session, the notary checks identity again. If that quiz cannot finish, a mobile notary or a walk-in is the product that can finish.

The certificate has required words. K.S.A. 53-5a15(c) and (d): the certificate must show that the act used communication technology. A short form is enough if it meets the Secretary’s rules, or if it is the statutory short form and contains a statement substantially as follows: “This notarial act involved the use of communication technology.” K.A.R. 7-43-17(a) prints that same sentence. K.A.R. 7-43-20 adds the name of the remote signer, the date, the state and county, a description of the act, that communication-technology sentence, and the notary’s official seal tied to the record and signed with the notary’s digital certificate. A digital certificate is an electronic credential that ties the signature to the notary and makes a later change show.

The session file is part of the act, and the clocks are not one sentence. K.S.A. 53-5a20: the notary keeps a journal of all notarial acts and retains it for 10 years after the last act written in that journal. The entry is made at the time of the act. It includes the date and time, a description of the record and the type of act, the full name and address of each person, how identity was established, and the fee, if any. A journal you can hold is one permanent bound register with numbered pages. An electronic journal is permanent and tamper-evident. Tamper-evident means a later change shows. K.S.A. 53-5a15(e): the audio-visual recording is kept at least 10 years after the recording is made, unless a regulation sets a different period. K.A.R. 7-43-23 does not shorten that floor. It says the journal is kept at least 10 years after the last act in the journal, and each recording is kept at least 10 years after the recording is made. The handbook’s remote section blends those into one line, “at least 10 years after the last notarial act and recording is made.” The statute keeps the two clocks separate. We are printing both.

Who may hold the journal is the other place the sources do not use one sentence. K.S.A. 53-5a20(f): instead of keeping the journal, the notary may send it to a repository approved by the Secretary of State. The notary page’s journal summary says that, as of January 1, 2022, only the notary or the Kansas Secretary of State may retain the journal, and that no other journal repositories are approved, including the notary’s employer. K.A.R. 7-43-23(d) allows a written contract with a third party to store the journal and the recording, if that party has verified to the Secretary, under penalty of perjury, that it meets the rule. The handbook says to choose a repository from the providers on file, and it also describes that third-party contract. We are printing the statute, the notary-page summary, and the regulation. We are not deciding which drawer a later dispute will use.

One cite on the notary page points at the wrong section title, and the same page later points at the right one. Under “Key Changes,” the page says K.S.A. 53-5a21 allows remote online notarization. The text of K.S.A. 53-5a21 we read is the notice for notarial acts on electronic records, the in-room electronic path, plus a register of deeds rule for a copy you can hold. Later on that same notary page, the remote section says state-law requirements for remote online notarizations are at K.S.A. 53-5a15. That is the section titled for a remotely located individual. We are printing both cites. The remote duties we describe in this scorecard are the ones in 53-5a15 and in K.A.R. 7-43-17 through 7-43-23.

The bill date and the operative date are also both on the page, and they are not the same day. The legislature’s SB 106 page says the Governor approved the bill on April 21, 2021, and prints “Law effective July 1, 2021.” Each section we read, from K.S.A. 53-5a01 through 53-5a23, says that section takes effect on and after January 1, 2022. The Secretary of State page uses January 1, 2022 as the date a Kansas notary may perform remote online notarization. The July 1 line is the act date on the bill page. The January 1 line is the date the notary sections themselves print.