Qualified trust service provider (QTSP)

A qualified trust service provider (QTSP) is an organization that has been granted qualified status by a national supervisory body under the EU's eIDAS regulation to provide one or more qualified trust services. Those services include issuing qualified certificates for electronic signatures and seals, qualified timestamps, qualified validation and preservation of signatures, and qualified electronic registered delivery. The 2024 amendments added further qualified services, such as electronic attestations of attributes and electronic archiving.

Becoming a trust service provider with qualified status is demanding. The provider must be audited by an accredited conformity assessment body, meet strict requirements for security, staff, liability and identity verification, and be re-audited at least every 24 months. Once approved, it is published on its country's trusted list, and the EU aggregates these national lists so that software across Europe can check whether a certificate came from a genuine QTSP.

When someone creates a qualified electronic signature, the QTSP is the party that verified their identity and issued the qualified certificate underpinning the signature. Its role is similar to a certificate authority in general PKI, but with regulatory supervision and legal consequences attached.

A practical example: an accounting firm in Belgium needs partners to sign statutory filings with a QES. Rather than building anything itself, the firm contracts a QTSP, whose onboarding process verifies each partner's identity and issues qualified certificates. The firm's documents can then be signed either through the QTSP's own tool or through a signing platform integrated with that provider.

A common misconception is that any e-signature company is a QTSP. Most are not; many platforms offer simple signatures only, and those that offer qualified ones usually partner with a separate QTSP. Another is that a QTSP's approval in one country limits it to that country. Qualified services are recognized throughout the EU.

Our take: if a vendor claims qualified signatures, look up the named provider on the EU trusted list yourself. It takes a minute and cuts through a lot of marketing language. Genuine QTSPs are easy to verify, and that transparency is one of the best features of the eIDAS system.

eSignSimple is not a QTSP and does not issue qualified certificates. We provide simple electronic signatures supported by an audit trail, certificate of completion and a SHA-256 document hash that can be checked on our /verify page.