What is e-Residency?
“e-Residency offers to every world citizen a government-issued digital identity and the opportunity to run a trusted company online, unleashing the world’s entrepreneurial potential.“
The Republic of Estonia is the first country to offer e-Residency — a transnational digital identity available to anyone in the world interested in administering a location-independent busi
ness online. e-Residency additionally enables secure and convenient digital services that facilitate credibility and trust online. e-Residents can:
- Digitally sign documents and contracts
- Verify the authenticity of signed documents
- Encrypt and transmit documents securely
- Establish an Estonian company online within a day. At the moment a physical address in Estonia is required, which may be obtained using an external service provider.
- Administer the company from anywhere in the world.
- Conduct e-banking and remote money transfers. Establishing an Estonian bank account currently requires one in-person meeting at the bank, and is at the sole discretion of our banking partners.
- Access online payment service providers
- Declare Estonian taxes online. e-Residents receive a smart ID card which provides:
- digital identification and authentication to secure services
- digital signing of documents
- digital verification of document authenticity
- document encryption
Digital signatures and authentication are legally equivalent to handwritten signatures and face-to-face identification in Estonia and between partners upon agreement anywhere around the world. The e-Resident ID card and services are built on state-of-the-art technological solutions, including 2048-bit public key encryption. The smart ID card contains a microchip with two security certificates: one for authentication, called PIN1, and another for digital signing, called PIN2. PIN1 is a minimum 4-digit number for authorization, PIN2 is a minimum 5-digit number for digital signature. e-Residency does not confer citizenship, tax residency, residence or right of entry to Estonia or to the European Union. The e-Resident smart ID card is not a physical identification or a travel document, and does not display a photo.