Secure portals and web forms confirm that an upload completed. They cannot tell you that a named, identity-checked person took possession — because nothing in the chain ever checked who was on the other end. ProntoDeliver does, and it issues the receipt to both sides.
Every file transfer passes through four distinct states. The tools most firms use are genuinely good at the first three. The fourth — the one your file note quietly assumes — is the one nothing produces, because producing it requires checking a person rather than a session.
This is not a criticism of any particular product. Secure email, managed file transfer and web submission forms all solve the problem they were built for, which is confidentiality in transit and at rest. Identity was simply never in scope. An email address is a routing instruction, a portal account is a credential, and neither is a person. Where the stakes are a limitation date, a disclosure obligation or a privileged document reaching the wrong household, the firm is left evidencing delivery with material that was never designed to evidence it.
The absence of a receipt is invisible until the moment someone disputes it. Then it is the whole file.
A dispute about when something was received is a dispute about the date, and the date decides the point. A submission confirmation timestamps your upload. It says nothing about when the other side actually came into possession.
Documents arriving through an open web form carry an asserted name and an email address. If provenance is later challenged, the firm is reconstructing it from headers and recollection rather than producing a verified identity captured at the moment of upload.
Family, employment and private client work routinely sends privileged material to addresses another person can reach. A delivery method that checks the reader, not the mailbox, is a control rather than a hope.
Article 12(6) UK GDPR lets a controller ask for further information where there is reasonable doubt about a requester’s identity. Releasing a subject access bundle to an impersonator is itself a breach. Verifying at the point of collection puts the check where the disclosure happens.
Conveyancing and transactional work runs on documents moving between parties to a timetable. Where an undertaking turns on delivery, the firm carries the risk of proving it — and payment redirection fraud lives in exactly this gap.
“I never received it” is one of the most common complaints a firm has to answer and one of the hardest to rebut. A collection receipt turns a credibility contest into a document.
Most secure transfer tools are strong in one direction and an afterthought in the other. Identity is the same primitive whichever way the file is moving, so ProntoDeliver treats both the same way.
Bind the file to the named recipient. The claim link reveals only the filename, size and what verification is required — never the contents. When the recipient passes the check, the file decrypts and the fee earner gets a receipt naming the person who collected it. Forward the link to a spouse, a colleague or an opponent and it will not open, because the check is on the face, not the inbox.
Publish an intake link the way you would publish a submission form, with one difference: the sender verifies who they are before the upload is accepted. The firm receives a verified name bound to the file and its hash at the moment of intake. And the sender is not left guessing — when someone at the firm collects the file, an acknowledgement goes back to them.
The reciprocal acknowledgement is the part firms tend to underestimate. A client who uploads medical records or bank statements into a one-way form and hears nothing will phone the office to ask whether it arrived, and someone will spend ten minutes finding out. Closing that loop is a receipt for them and an hour a week back for you.
A receipt is only useful if it is still useful in two years, in front of someone who is inclined to doubt it. Each ProntoDeliver receipt is a self-contained record of what was checked and when, hashed and sealed so that alteration is detectable rather than merely discouraged.
Failed and abandoned attempts are recorded too, with the reason. A record that only ever shows success is not an audit trail.
Firms in scope of the money laundering regulations already have to identify the client from a reliable, independent source before the relationship gets going. That work happens today in a separate system, on a separate day, producing a separate record that lives somewhere other than the matter file.
ProntoDeliver runs on the same verification engine. The check that satisfies your onboarding evidence is the check that produces the delivery receipt, and it is captured against the matter rather than filed away in an onboarding tool. One interaction with the client, two obligations evidenced — and a client who is asked for a passport once rather than twice.
The regulations permit electronic identification where the process is secure from fraud and misuse and provides the necessary degree of assurance. Sector guidance is equally clear that the firm must satisfy itself that a given technology meets the assurance level its risk assessment demands. We give you the evidence and the audit trail. The compliance decision stays with your MLRO, as it should.
The EU anti-money laundering regulation applicable from 2027 extends and tightens these duties across member states. Firms choosing verification infrastructure now are choosing what they will be audited on then.
You will read the small print, so here it is in large print. These are the limits we would want disclosed to us.
What is left after all of that is still the thing you cannot get anywhere else: a contemporaneous, sealed record that a specific human being, checked against a government document and a live face, took possession of a specific file at a specific moment.
Nobody should replace their file transfer estate on a first conversation. Pick the workflow where a missing receipt would hurt most and run that one.
Usually it is client onboarding documents, a disclosure exchange, or the subject access responses nobody wants to send by email.
Keep your existing route in place. Send through both for a fortnight and compare what each one can actually prove afterwards.
Bring the audit trail to whoever signs off on risk. That conversation decides adoption far more reliably than a demo does.
Written for the person in the firm whose job is to find the hole in it. Anything missing? Ask us directly.
The full technical picture: encryption model, delivery modes, rules engine and API.
Learn MoreThe verification layer underneath. Document capture, MRZ parsing and biometric liveness in one call.
Learn MoreWhere the document needs signing rather than delivering, anchored to the same identity check.
Learn MoreA short call, your hardest workflow, and an honest answer about whether this is worth your time. If it is not, we will say so.
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This page is general information about a software product and is not legal advice. References to legislation, regulations and sector guidance are included to show where the product may be relevant to obligations firms already have; they are not a statement that use of ProntoDeliver satisfies any particular obligation. Regulatory duties differ by jurisdiction and by the work being undertaken, and responsibility for compliance rests with the regulated firm. Firms should take their own advice before relying on any delivery method for a purpose where the method itself is prescribed.