88 States on a shared template, with a published adoption table.
80
countries listed
—
no statutory tiers
UNCITRAL's Model Law on Electronic Commerce (1996) is not itself law anywhere. It is a template national legislatures adopt, and UNCITRAL maintains a status table recording every State that has enacted legislation based on or influenced by it — 88 States and 171 jurisdictions, the difference being that jurisdictions counts sub-national units such as US states and Canadian provinces. The companion Model Law on Electronic Signatures (2001), adopted in fewer States, adds criteria for when a signature method is considered reliable. Because adoption is recorded in a published table, membership of this family is citable without a separate reading of each national statute — which is why countries can be listed here honestly before their individual statute has been sourced.
The Model Law itself does not tier signatures. Most adopting States distinguish an ordinary electronic signature from a stronger form — variously 'advanced', 'qualified' or 'certified' — but the naming and the legal consequence differ by State, so the tier structure is recorded per country rather than for the family.
Every statement above traces to one of these. Open any of them.
Placement follows the published source named on each entry, not a reading of every national statute. A country moves to a more specific family only once its own law has been sourced.
Countries with a gold outline have a full page of their own.
General information — not legal advice
This page summarizes electronic signature legislation drawn from primary legal sources and international bodies including UNCITRAL and UNCTAD. It is not legal advice and creates no solicitor–client or attorney–client relationship. Laws change, and how they apply depends on the transaction, the parties, and the document type. Before relying on electronic signatures for a regulated, high-value, or cross-border transaction — or for any document type listed as excluded — take advice from qualified counsel in the jurisdiction whose law governs that transaction. That is a separate question from the governing law of your agreement with SignForge, which is set out in our Terms of Service.
Last reviewed: 10 August 2026