Legal Force of Blockchain-Based Notarial Digital Cover Notes for Banking Credit Document Verification

Digitalisation has accelerated document exchange in banking credit processes but has not automatically ensured the authenticity, integrity, traceability, and reliability of legal information used when the process of completing collateral documentation remains unfinished. In Indonesian banking practice, a notarial Cover Note is used to provide interim information regarding the status of document completion, although it does not constitute an authentic deed and has no constitutive effect on the legal perfection of collateral or the authority to disburse credit. This study aims to design a blockchain-based notarial Digital Cover Note framework for document verification and to analyse its implications for legal certainty in banking credit decisions. The study employs a normative legal research method (doctrinal legal research), using statutory, conceptual, and case approaches, supplemented by an interdisciplinary information technology perspective and the mapping of seven clusters of court decisions. The findings yield a verification architecture integrating notarial digital identity, electronic signatures, cryptographic hashes, timestamping, a permissioned blockchain, smart contracts, and an audit trail. This framework strengthens the verification of document provenance, integrity, chronology, traceability, and information auditability. However, it does not establish the substantive truth of a Cover Note's contents, perfect the creation of a security interest, or replace the bank's authority to assess creditworthiness and authorise credit disbursement. Its implications for legal certainty are therefore supportive and evidentiary rather than constitutive: the technology strengthens information verifiability without creating new legal effects. Under this framework, the Digital Cover Note functions as a trusted information layer in the assessment of credit and collateral, while blockchain serves as verification infrastructure rather than a source of legal authority or a mechanism for automatic credit approval.