Yes, you may permit the customer to use a stamp of her signature to sign her checks. The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) expressly states that a signature may be made by means of a device or machine. The UCC comments further clarify that “[a] signature may be handwritten, typed, printed, or made in any other manner.” In addition, Illinois courts have held that “neither the common law nor the UCC requires a handwritten signature” and that “[m]arks of many different sorts may qualify as signatures, as long as the mark ‘manifests that the instrument has been executed or adopted by the party to be charged by it.’”

From a practical standpoint, your customer’s use of a signature stamp may increase the risk of fraud if she loses the stamp or it is stolen and then it is used to forge her signature. Under the UCC, your bank is not liable if this happens if you can prove that the customer’s own negligence substantially contributed to the forgery (for example, if she left her signature stamp at a coffee house). We should note, however, that it is not uncommon for blind persons to use signature stamps for signing legally binding documents, including checks.

For resources related to our guidance, please see:

• Uniform Commercial Code, 810 ILCS 5/3-401 (“A signature may be made (i) manually or by means of a device or machine, and (ii) by the use of any name, including any trade or assumed name, or by a word, mark, or symbol executed or adopted by a person with present intention to authenticate a writing.”)

• Uniform Commercial Code § 3-401, Comment 2 (“A signature may be handwritten, typed, printed, or made in any other manner. It need not be subscribed, and may appear in the body of the instrument, as in the case of “I, John Doe, promise to pay * * *” without any other signature. It may be made by mark, or even by thumbprint.”) 

• Cloud Corp. v. Hasbro Inc., 314 F.3d 289, 296 (7th Cir. 2002) (“Neither the common law nor the UCC requires a handwritten signature.”)

• Roti v. Roti, 364 Ill.App.3d 191, 196 (1st Dist. 2006) (“Marks of many different sorts may qualify as signatures, as long as the mark ‘manifests that the instrument has been executed or adopted by the party to be charged by it.’”)

• Uniform Commercial Code, 810 ILCS 5/3-406 (“A person whose failure to exercise ordinary care substantially contributes to an alteration of an instrument or to the making of a forged signature on an instrument is precluded from asserting the alteration or the forgery against a person who, in good faith, pays the instrument or takes it for value or for collection.”)