Choosing an eSign Service Provider
Only seven organisations can legally issue an Aadhaar eSign. Here they are, and what onboarding involves.
Aadhaar eSign cannot be bought from UIDAI, and it cannot be built. The Controller of Certifying Authorities empanels a small number of eSign Service Providers, and only they can originate one.
The empanelled providers
| Provider | Notes |
|---|---|
| eMudhra | The largest. Most Indian eSign products are built on it. |
| Capricorn Identity Services | Publishes its ASP forms, audit checklist and agreement openly, which makes onboarding easier to plan. |
| Protean eGov Technologies | Formerly NSDL e-Gov. The strongest brand with banks and NBFCs. |
| C-DAC | Government body, oriented to government projects. |
| Verasys | Smaller. |
| CDSL Ventures | Capital-markets oriented. |
| CSC e-Governance | Serves the Common Service Centre network. |
If a vendor offers you Aadhaar eSign and is not on that list, they are reselling one of these. That can be a perfectly good arrangement — it is usually faster to start — but ask which Certifying Authority actually backs the signature, because that is what appears in your audit trail.
What onboarding involves
The code is the easy part. The gates are commercial and procedural:
- A signed application and an ASP agreement with your chosen provider.
- An organisational Document Signer Certificate, to sign your requests.
- Technical integration against their sandbox.
- An audit by a CCA-empanelled auditor. This is the real gate — budget both
money and several weeks for it.
- Physical document submission, then go live.
Expect a few weeks end to end, most of it waiting rather than working.
What to ask for in the first email
- Per-signature price at your expected monthly volume.
- Any minimum annual commitment. This is the term that catches small teams.
- Which Certifying Authority backs the signature.
- Sandbox access and their integration guide.
- A sample audit-trail PDF from a completed transaction.
Switching later
SignSpry talks the CCA's standard eSign v3.3 protocol rather than any one provider's proprietary API. Changing provider — or running a second one as a fallback — means replacing the ASP ID, gateway and certificates on the settings page. It is not a rebuild.