When the Notary Asks for Your ID

The notary's office emails ahead of the appointment: "Please send a copy of your ID in advance." It feels routine, so most people attach a scan and forget about it. But a notary ID request before a Beurkundung deserves a second look, because the identification the law actually requires happens at the table, in person — and the copy you emailed is a separate artefact that the legal obligation often doesn't need at all.

The distinction matters most precisely when stakes are high: property purchases, company formations, powers of attorney. These are exactly the moments your ID data is most valuable and most worth keeping minimal.

What the notary is legally doing

At a Beurkundung, the notary must establish who is sitting in front of them. Under the Beurkundungsgesetz, the notary records how the parties were identified — and the canonical method is in-person presentation of a valid official photo ID. The notary looks at the physical document, matches it to the person, and notes the identification in the deed.

Layered on top is the notary's role as an obliged entity under the Geldwäschegesetz. For transactions within scope (a property purchase being the classic example), the notary has GwG Sorgfaltspflichten: identify the parties, verify against a document, and keep a record of having done so. Both duties point at the same act — verifying a real document against a real person — and both are satisfied best in the room.

Why in-person beats a copy in an inbox

Here is the practitioner's insight that the "send a copy in advance" email obscures: the notary's strongest form of identification is the live presentation, not a scan. A flat copy is weaker evidence of identity than the physical document examined in person, where security features can be checked and the photo matched to a live face.

So the copy emailed in advance often serves convenience, not the legal requirement:

• It lets the assistant pre-fill the deed with your details.
• It gives the office a record they find tidy to have.

Neither is the identification itself. The identification is the moment at the table. And the emailed copy carries all the downsides of any flat scan: it sits in a mailbox, a backup, possibly a shared drive, where it can be forwarded or leaked — a static artefact with the risk profile covered in identity theft from an ID copy. You created a permanent copy to satisfy a requirement that the in-person step was going to satisfy anyway.

What's needed vs. what's merely convenient

A clear way to hold the two apart:

Element	Needed for the Beurkundung?	Notes
Valid official photo ID, presented in person	Yes	The core identification under the Beurkundungsgesetz
Your details transcribed into the deed	Yes	Taken from the document at the appointment
A scan emailed in advance	Usually no	Convenience for pre-filling; ask if it's required
A full unredacted copy retained on file	Situational	Depends on the GwG record-keeping obligation, not automatic
Document number / MRZ for non-GwG matters	Often no	Not needed just because the form has a field

The rule of thumb: the in-person presentation is non-negotiable and correct. Everything sent around it should be questioned, because it tends to be habit rather than obligation.

Keeping your data minimal at a Notartermin

You can be a cooperative party and still keep your exposure tight. A few moves:

Lead with in-person. When asked to email a copy in advance, it's reasonable to reply that you'll present your ID at the appointment, and to ask whether an advance copy is actually required or just convenient. Often it's the latter, and the request quietly drops.

If a copy is genuinely needed, scope it. Ask what the GwG record-keeping obligation specifically requires. Notaries must document the identification, but "document the identification" is not always "keep a full unredacted scan forever." Where you can, share a copy that's redacted to the purpose and watermarked to the recipient and date, rather than a clean full scan. The same data-minimisation logic you'd apply with a bank applies here — see what banks may require for KYC for how to frame "necessary for this purpose."

If you must send something digitally, send access, not an artefact. A scoped link with a short expiry, an access limit, downloads off, and an audit log keeps the copy in a place you control and lets you revoke it once the appointment is done. That's the access-not-artefact model from sharing your ID without losing control. The notary's office still gets what it needs to prepare; you don't leave a permanent scan in their inbox.

The conversation, scripted

You don't need to be difficult to be careful. A clean exchange:

1. Confirm the in-person step. "I'll bring my ID and present it at the appointment."
2. Question the advance copy. "Is an advance copy legally required, or is it for pre-filling the deed?"
3. If required, ask about retention. "Which GwG obligation requires a retained copy, and in what form?"
4. Offer a controlled share. "I can send a scoped link rather than an email attachment, if that works for your file."

This reads as informed, not obstructive — and notaries, who live in the world of legal precision, generally respond well to a precisely framed request.

The retention question after the appointment

The act of identification ends when the deed is signed, but the copy doesn't necessarily go away. If the office took a scan in advance, or made one on the day, that file now sits in their system — and a notary's records are kept for years. Two distinct things are happening, and it's worth separating them.

The notary genuinely must document that the identification occurred and how — which document, presented when. That obligation is about the record of the act. It is not automatically an obligation to retain a full, unredacted, indefinitely-stored image of your ID. Where the GwG record-keeping duty applies to the transaction, the office must keep a record proportionate to that duty; "a record of the identification" and "a permanent high-resolution scan of every field" are not the same thing, and the gap between them is yours to ask about.

A practical follow-up after the appointment:

• ask whether any advance copy you sent is still needed now that identification is complete in person;
• if you used a controlled share, revoke it once the deed is signed — there's no reason to leave the link live;
• if the office retains a copy under its GwG duty, that's legitimate, but confirm it's the scoped version you provided, not a clean full scan you can avoid creating in the first place.

None of this obstructs the notary's work. It simply ensures the only copies that persist are the ones a real obligation requires, in the form that obligation actually needs.

Where a verified profile fits

If you go through notarised transactions periodically — buying property, restructuring a company, granting powers of attorney — the advance-copy request recurs, and so does the temptation to just email a scan. A verify-once model breaks the habit. With ShareKYC you verify your identity data a single time, hold it AES-256 encrypted in an EU-hosted vault, and when an office genuinely needs something in advance, you share a scoped link — expiry, access limit, downloads off, audit log, forensic watermark — instead of an attachment that lingers. The in-person presentation still does the legal work; the digital side simply stops generating permanent copies.

Conclusion

A notary ID request centres on one act: presenting a valid document, in person, at the Beurkundung. That live presentation is both the legally cleanest identification and the one that creates no copy to leak. Treat the "email a scan in advance" request as convenience to be questioned, not obligation to be obeyed — and where a copy is genuinely required, scope it, watermark it, and prefer controlled access over a permanent artefact. ShareKYC makes that the easy default for the times an advance copy is unavoidable.