Somewhere in the process of moving your paperwork off paper, someone will tell you that electronic signatures don't count unless they're "advanced". They're describing something real, and applying it far too widely.
South African law has two tiers. Almost everything you sign in a small business sits in the lower one, and that's fine.
The two tiers
The ordinary electronic signature is the broad category: data attached to a document that the signer intended as their signature. Typed name, drawn scrawl, click of a button. Wide open by design.
The advanced electronic signature is narrow and specific. It's a signature created through a process that has been formally accredited by the accreditation authority set up under the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act. To use one, you first prove who you are to the accredited provider. They issue you a credential. When you sign with it, the signature carries the provider's assurance that the person behind it was identity-checked.
The important word is accredited. An advanced electronic signature isn't a fancier drawing or a better-encrypted PDF. It's a signature from a provider the state has signed off on. Software cannot promote an ordinary signature into an advanced one by adding features.
Which one your document needs
The rule is easier than it sounds. Where a law requires something to be signed and says nothing about electronic signatures, that requirement is met by an advanced electronic signature. Everywhere else, an ordinary electronic signature is enough.
So the question isn't how important your document feels. A million-rand service agreement and a R500 quote are in the same tier, because no statute demands a signature on either. What pushes a document up a tier is a legal requirement to sign it, sitting in some other piece of legislation. That's a small, specific set, and a small business rarely meets it. Certain documents involving the state, some statutory declarations and a handful of regulated filings are where it shows up.
Separately, and this trips people up, a short list of documents can't be signed electronically at all: wills, the sale of immovable property, long leases of land. Those aren't an advanced-signature problem. No tier of electronic signature works, so they stay on paper.
What the difference actually buys you
Both tiers are valid signatures. The difference is who has to prove what.
An advanced electronic signature is presumed valid. If someone disputes it, the starting position is that the signature is genuine and it's on them to show otherwise. That's a meaningful advantage, and it's what you're paying the accredited provider for.
An ordinary electronic signature carries no such presumption. If the signer denies it, you may have to show that they applied it and intended it as their signature. That's not a hole, it's just work you have to be able to do. Which is exactly why the surrounding record matters more than the mark: the email address the request went to, the timestamps, the device, the document exactly as it was when signed.
An ordinary signature with a solid trail is defensible. An ordinary signature that's a cropped image dropped into a PDF is not, and no amount of legal validity fixes that.
Don't buy the wrong tier
Two mistakes cost real money here. The first is assuming you need accredited signatures for your quotes and contracts, and either paying for something you don't need or, more often, deciding e-signing is too complicated and going back to printing. The second is reaching for a signature image on something that genuinely required a handwritten one, and finding out later.
Check whether a law requires a signature on the document. If not, sign it electronically and keep the record.
E·BIZI Papers handles the ordinary tier properly: a link your client opens, a signature captured with the details around it, and a finished PDF with a trail behind it. For the rare document that needs an accredited advanced signature, you'll be going to an accredited provider, and no signing tool substitutes for that.
This guide is general information, not legal advice on your specific document. If a signature requirement is in play, check it with someone qualified.