Electronic Transaction Law (ETL) 2025
Oman recently issued the Electronic Transaction Law 2025. It provides for the legal recognition of electronic documents, electronic signatures, and contracts entered into through digital means.
What’s new?
The ETL is a simplified restatement of the earlier 2008 law. Various provisions contained in the earlier law have been removed, such as those relating to:
- the protection of personal data (for which a dedicated law was enacted in 2022); and
- a qualification preventing the law from applying to court procedures, documents requiring authentication, and matters relating to personal law.
Trust Service Providers (i.e. service-providers who can legally attest electronic documents, issue attestation seals on documents and issue attestation certificates, verify the signatory’s identity, and deliver electronic documents to parties) were already acknowledged in the earlier law. They will now be regulated by a newly formed Trust Services Management Committee to be established under the Ministry of Transport, Communication, and Information Technology.
Electronic Documents as Evidence
For an electronic document to be capable of being used as evidence, there are certain prerequisites which must be fulfilled. Notably, there should be a reliable method of ensuring the document’s integrity in the form of digital safeguards to prevent the modification of the document after its issuance. The method by which the issuer’s identity has been verified should be reliable, as should the manner of its production, storage, and transmission.
Electronic Signatures
In addition to documents, electronic signatures have also been given statutory recognition under the ETL. In case the parties are able to establish the criteria set out for electronic documents to be used as evidence, the signature in question will be treated as a ‘simple electronic signature’.
However, there is also a new concept, that of ‘advanced electronic signatures’. For a signature to be an ‘advanced electronic signature’, the document should not be capable of being modified after the signature has been placed on it. Furthermore, the tool used for producing the signature should be under the signatory’s sole control – this appears to encompass biometric verification, as well as handwritten signatures by a finger or a stylus.
Criteria for Recognition
While the criteria for recognition of electronic documents and electronic signatures under the ETL will naturally be easier to establish if the document is attested by a licensed Trust Service Provider, there is nothing preventing the parties from independently establishing that prerequisites for a recognized electronic document and/or electronic signature have been met notwithstanding the absence of attestation by a Trust Service Provider. The statute would nonetheless have benefited from a statutory presumption regarding the genuineness of documents attested by a licensed Trust Service Provider – this is absent.
Acknowledgment of Receipt
The ETL also provides certain special rules for the exchange of electronic documents between parties. Firstly, the issuer may provide that the document is conditional upon receipt of acknowledgment. If acknowledgment is not given (or not given within the stipulated time), then the document will be treated as if it had never been received. Moreover, the issuer may request the addressee to confirm that the document has met the technical requirements for an electronic document under the ETL.
