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Stamp maker Australia
1 September 2026 ยท Estamplab
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A bank, a conveyancer or an overseas buyer has asked for your company seal, and you do not have one. That is almost always why this page gets opened, so here is the answer first: Australian law does not require you to have one, and you can have one ready to use in about two minutes anyway.
Both halves of that matter. The first stops you buying something you do not need. The second gets the document out today.
Does an Australian company need a common seal?
No. Section 123 of the Corporations Act 2001 says a company may have a common seal, and section 127 lets a company execute a document with or without one. Executing without a seal means signing: two directors, a director and the company secretary, or the sole director of a single-director company.
That is the whole answer at law, and it is why most Australian companies formed in the last twenty years have never owned a seal. The one thing worth checking is your own constitution, because a constitution can provide for a seal on particular instruments, and that provision binds the company even though the Act would not.
So why do people keep asking for one?
Because the rest of the world did not follow. In Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, the Gulf and across much of Africa, a company mark is how a company signs, and a document without one looks unsigned. An Australian exporter sending an unsealed contract to a Jakarta counterparty is not making a legal point, they are making a document that will come back.
Domestically it is narrower but real: share certificates traditionally carry a seal, some conveyancing and trust documents are still prepared expecting one, and a handful of tender portals have a field for it.
What goes on an Australian company seal
- The company name exactly as registered with ASIC, including the Pty Ltd or Ltd suffix.
- The ACN, the nine digit Australian Company Number. This is the identifier that belongs on a company seal.
- Often the words "Common Seal", which is the traditional wording.
- Sometimes the year of incorporation on the lower ring.
The ABN is the tax identifier, not the company identifier. It belongs on an invoicing stamp rather than on the seal, and putting it on the seal is the most common thing people get wrong. Company documents do have to show the ACN, and a stamp carrying it is a tidy way of satisfying that on a form with no letterhead, though the obligation attaches to the document rather than to the seal.
Common seal, company seal, company stamp
These three get used interchangeably in conversation and they are not the same thing.
The common seal is the formal instrument under section 123. Historically it was embossed into the paper to execute a deed, and its use was minuted.
A company seal in everyday speech is usually the round inked mark carrying the company name and ACN. It is evidence of which company issued a document, not an execution formality.
A company stamp is anything else the business stamps with: an address block, a PAID stamp, a received stamp with the date, an authorised signatory line. No legal weight, a lot of practical use.
Most Australian businesses that ask for "a seal" want the second one, and are being asked for it by somebody who wants the third.
Embossed or inked
An embosser presses the mark into the paper. It is the traditional article and it feels serious, which is not nothing. Its problem is that an embossed impression barely survives a photocopy and disappears entirely in a scan, and Australian documents move as PDFs.
An inked or digital seal is what actually arrives at the other end intact. If a specific counterparty wants an embossed impression on paper, that is a physical requirement and an embosser is what meets it. For everything that gets emailed, a digital mark is the one that is legible when it gets there.
Making one you can use today
A stamp is a file. Design it, download it, and it goes onto a contract, an invoice, a share certificate or a scanned form in about a minute, on a laptop or a phone. Nothing is posted, nothing is cut, and when your registered office changes you edit the mark rather than reorder it.
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Two practical notes that save a reprint. Keep it around 40mm across, because that is the size at which a ring of text is still readable after a document has been printed and scanned once. And use one solid ink, blue or black, since a pale multi-colour mark drops out of a scan and is the thing that makes a stamped document look like a graphic.
What this page is not
This describes ordinary commercial practice in Australia. It is not legal advice, and the requirements for a particular document, especially a deed, a land dealing or anything going to a court or a registry, are set by the law that governs that document and sometimes by the body receiving it. Estamplab is a design tool, and this describes common commercial practice rather than giving legal advice. Check the requirement with your lawyer, or with the body asking, before you rely on a seal. Only produce a mark your own company is entitled to use: making one for a company you do not act for is forgery.
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