Notaries provide a service for commercial firms engaged in international trade, and for private individuals. The most common tasks are:

• preparing and witnessing powers of attorney for use overseas
• dealing with purchase or sale of land and property abroad
• providing documents to deal with the administration of the estates of people who are abroad, or owning property abroad
• authenticating personal documents and information for immigration or emigration purposes, or to apply to marry or to work abroad
• authenticating company and business documents and transactions.

At the moment, this is a paper-based process. There is a global initiative to digitise this process, the e-apostille programme which has defined all the processes, see Spannish government video below.

Only a few countries have implementation the e-apostille programme, e.g. New Zealand and Spain. Most countries, e.g. UK are many years from introducing such programmes. But in the long run the e-apostille programme will make it much easier to do business internationally.