National Notary Coalition Launches Notary Watch™, the First Nationwide Notary Vendor Accountability Platform

Launched March 17, 2026, Notary Watch™ gives notaries a centralized way to anonymously report payment, communication, fraud, and other vendor-related concerns.

The National Notary Coalition (NNC) announced the launch of Notary Watch™, the first nationwide independent platform dedicated to collecting and publicly tracking notary-reported incidents involving signing services, vendors, platforms, and other companies that hire notaries.

Launched on March 17, 2026, Notary Watch gives notaries across the United States a centralized place to anonymously report experiences involving nonpayment, late payment, communication issues, suspected fraud, and other assignment-related concerns.

Notary Watch launched with its first incident report already submitted.

But collecting reports is only the beginning.

Why the National Notary Coalition Created Notary Watch™

Independent notaries work with signing services, technology platforms, and other businesses that hire them to complete assignments.

For the National Notary Coalition, one problem demanded greater visibility: notaries reporting that they completed assigned work but were not paid—or were paid later than expected.

In many assignments, the company that directly hires the notary may itself have been hired by another business involved in the transaction.

When a payment problem occurs, the notary may be left attempting to resolve the issue with the company that hired them while other parties involved in the transaction may have already fulfilled their own contractual payment obligations.

That raises a larger industry question:

What happens when the notary completes the assignment but reports that they still have not been paid?

Notary Watch was created to begin documenting those experiences at scale.

Turning Individual Notary Reports Into Industry Data

One report represents one notary's reported experience.

When independent reports accumulate, however, the aggregate data can begin revealing recurring companies, reported issues, geographic trends, and other patterns that may warrant further attention.

Notary Watch provides the infrastructure for the National Notary Coalition to track those patterns over time.

Anonymous Reporting From Day One

Notary Watch has allowed anonymous incident reporting since its launch.

Notaries can submit reports involving issues such as:

• Nonpayment
• Late payment
• Communication concerns
• Suspected fraud
• Other vendor, platform, or assignment-related concerns

The purpose of anonymous reporting is to provide notaries with a centralized way to document what they experienced without requiring their identity to appear publicly with the report.

Notary Watch reports represent information submitted by users. A report is not a finding by the National Notary Coalition that a company engaged in wrongdoing.

How Notary Watch™ Tracks Reported Vendor Risk

Notary Watch does more than collect individual submissions.

The platform uses established reporting thresholds and incident categories to classify companies based on information submitted through the reporting system.

Depending on the reporting patterns and criteria established by Notary Watch, classifications can include Monitoring, Mild Risk, and High Risk.

Certain incident selections may also result in a fraud-related system classification under Notary Watch's established criteria.

These classifications represent reporting patterns within the Notary Watch system. They are not judicial findings, regulatory determinations, or independent findings by NNC that a company committed wrongdoing.

Public Vendor Profiles Bring Reported Patterns Into View

From its launch, Notary Watch was designed to make aggregate vendor information publicly accessible.

Public vendor profiles allow users to see information generated from reports associated with companies appearing in the Notary Watch system.

As reports accumulate, the platform can provide greater visibility into recurring reported concerns rather than allowing each individual incident to exist in isolation.

The objective is not to adjudicate disputes.

It is to create greater Awareness, Advocacy, and Transparency around what independent notaries are reporting.

What Happens When Reports Begin Showing a Pattern?

Notary Watch data provides the National Notary Coalition with a starting point—not a final conclusion.

When aggregate reporting indicates that an issue may warrant additional attention, NNC can move beyond collecting reports and begin documenting what can actually be established.

Identify Reported Patterns

NNC uses aggregate Notary Watch data to identify recurring companies, issue categories, geographic patterns, and other trends that may warrant further attention.

Research Public Information

NNC may research publicly available information concerning businesses appearing in Notary Watch, including applicable business registrations, corporate records, regulatory information, and other authoritative public sources when relevant.

Conduct Outreach

When reporting patterns warrant further attention, NNC may contact businesses or other parties identified in connection with reported transactions to request information or a response.

NNC's outreach process may include up to three attempts:

Outreach 1 → Outreach 2 → Final Outreach

When an organization responds, NNC can document the response appropriately.

When an organization does not respond, NNC can document precisely what occurred—for example, that three outreach attempts were made and that no response had been received as of a particular date.

A lack of response does not, by itself, establish the accuracy of an underlying allegation.

Report What Can Be Documented

NNC may use aggregate Notary Watch data, documented outreach, public records, authoritative sources, and responses received from organizations to develop executive summaries, research, public reporting, education, and advocacy.

NNC will distinguish between:

• what a notary reported,
• what aggregate Notary Watch data shows,
• what public records establish,
• what an organization says in response, and
• what remains unknown.

That distinction is fundamental to the Coalition's approach to industry accountability.

Looking Beyond the Company That Hired the Notary

Notary Watch also creates an opportunity to examine a larger part of the notary assignment ecosystem.

Who hired whom?

A notary may receive an assignment from a signing service, platform, or another vendor.

That business may itself have been retained by another organization involved in the underlying transaction.

Understanding that chain can become particularly important when repeated problems are reported.

As Notary Watch develops, NNC intends to examine these relationships using aggregate reporting data, public records, documented outreach, and authoritative sources.

The purpose is not to assume that every organization connected with a transaction bears responsibility for a reported problem.

The purpose is to document the relationships, understand how the system operates, and ask better questions about accountability.

Why Notary Watch™ Matters

Before Notary Watch, individual notaries could discuss their experiences with colleagues, post in online groups, contact a company directly, or pursue whatever individual remedies might be available to them.

Those individual experiences, however, did not create a centralized nationwide dataset dedicated to tracking reported incidents involving the companies that hire notaries.

Notary Watch was built to change that.

Tye Brown, founder of the National Notary Coalition, said the idea started with a straightforward problem: notaries were talking about unpaid work, but the industry lacked an independent nationwide system dedicated to collecting those experiences and turning them into usable data.

“One notary saying they weren't paid is their experience. When notaries across the country can independently report what is happening to them, we can begin looking at the data, identifying patterns and asking better questions. Notary Watch gives us somewhere to put that information and somewhere for the industry to see it.”

What Comes Next for Notary Watch™

The launch of Notary Watch on March 17, 2026 was the beginning of the work.

As the platform grows, the National Notary Coalition intends to use aggregate reporting to support research into vendor payment practices, signing platforms, assignment processes, data and credential practices, industry standards, and accountability structures affecting independent notaries.

That research can then support executive summaries, industry education, documented outreach, public reporting, and advocacy.

The information reported today can help create the record needed to ask larger questions tomorrow.

Notaries now have somewhere to report it.

The industry now has somewhere to see it.

About the National Notary Coalition

The National Notary Coalition is an independent organization focused on Awareness, Advocacy, and Transparency within the notary industry.

Through research, education, public reporting, outreach, advocacy, and Notary Watch™, the Coalition works to bring greater visibility to issues affecting independent notaries and the businesses, platforms, and systems surrounding their work.

About Notary Watch™

Notary Watch™ is a nationwide independent reporting and transparency platform operated by the National Notary Coalition.

The platform allows notaries to anonymously report incidents involving signing services, vendors, platforms, and other companies they encounter through their work.

Notary Watch reports contain information submitted by users and should not be interpreted as findings of wrongdoing, legal conclusions, or regulatory determinations by the National Notary Coalition.