Electronic signing runs on acronyms. Here is what each of them actually means, without the legal drafting. Every entry has its own link, so you can send someone straight to the one they need.
Advanced Electronic Signature (AES)
The middle tier of signature under EU law. It is uniquely linked to the signer, seals the document against later changes, and identifies the signer indirectly: through their email address and a code sent to their phone. Good for everyday business documents. See AES vs QES.
Qualified Electronic Signature (QES)
The top tier, and the only one the law treats as equivalent to a handwritten signature across the whole EU. It requires a proper identity check by a qualified trust service provider and a certificate issued to the signer personally. Use it for anything that could end up in front of a court.
Simple Electronic Signature (SES)
A typed name, a scanned squiggle, a tickbox. It is a signature in the legal sense but proves almost nothing about who made it. swipesign does not offer it: see Why we do not offer simple signatures.
eIDAS
The EU regulation that defines the three signature levels and makes them recognisable in every member state. It is the reason a Qualified signature made in Austria has to be accepted in Portugal.
Qualified Trust Service Provider (QTSP)
A company audited and supervised under eIDAS to issue qualified certificates and timestamps. swipesign does not issue signatures itself: it works with QTSPs who do. See Our trust service providers.
eID
A national electronic identity: ID Austria, Smart-ID, itsme, MitID, BankID and dozens more. If you hold one, proving who you are takes seconds. See Every eID you can sign with.
Identity verification (KYC)
"Know Your Customer": the check that ties a signature to a real person. Done once, by a trust service provider, usually through a short video call or your existing eID. swipesign never sees the images of your passport. See What identity verification involves.
Audit trail
The timestamped record of everything that happened to a document: who was invited, who opened it, who signed, when, and from where. It travels with the signed file and is what you produce if anyone disputes the process. See The audit trail.
Signature certificate page
A page appended to the finished document listing the signatures it carries. It is where a signature lands when no field was placed for it, and it is human-readable: unlike the cryptographic signature itself.
PAdES
PDF Advanced Electronic Signatures: the European standard for embedding signatures inside PDFs so that any compliant reader, Adobe Reader included, can check them. It is set by ETSI in EN 319 142 and has four levels, each adding evidence: B-B (the signature), B-T (plus a trusted timestamp), B-LT (plus the validation data) and B-LTA (plus a renewable archive timestamp). swipesign applies B-LTA after every signature. See Why your signature stays valid for decades.
Long-term validation (LTV)
Extra evidence baked into the file at signing time, the certificate status and a qualified timestamp, so the signature can still be verified years later, after the certificates behind it have expired. Without it, an old signature eventually reads as "unknown" rather than "valid".
Timestamp
Independent proof from a trusted authority that the document existed in this exact state at a given moment. It is what stops anyone arguing about when something was signed.
Signature field
The box you place on the page to say where a particular person's signature should appear. Optional, a signature with no field goes to the certificate page instead. See Place signature fields.
Signer, viewer, reviewer
The three things you can ask of someone. A signer signs. A viewer gets a link to read and nothing to sign. A reviewer approves or rejects the document before any signing starts. Only signers use your signature allowance.
Company signer
A recipient that is an organisation rather than a person. Whoever opens its link names up to three people who will sign for it, and each of them gets their own invitation. See Signing on behalf of a company.
PIN protected document access
A workflow setting that makes recipients prove who they are before the document will open at all, a code by text, a PIN, or their own swipesign password. See Opening a protected document.
Safe Transfer
Sending files rather than signatures: the recipient has to pass a check before they can download. Separate from signing, same identity machinery underneath. See What Safe Transfer is.
PDF/A
The archival flavour of PDF: everything needed to render the file is embedded in it, so it looks the same in twenty years. Asked for by archives, courts and public bodies. See Convert a PDF to PDF/A.