AKD Certilia Gen2 / HKIE smart card signing fails - unexpected card error

[TVelOs]

TEST-ZIG.pdf

Hello,

I am using PDF-XChange Editor Plus 11.0.1 on Windows 11.

I am trying to digitally sign a PDF document with an AKD Certilia Gen2 smart card / HKIE certificate.

The same smart card and the same signing certificate work correctly in Adobe Acrobat.

In PDF-XChange I use:

Protect → Sign Document

Then I select the correct signing certificate:

Tihomir Vemenac
OU=Signature
O=HKIE
Issuer: CERTILIA

The certificate is visible in Windows Certificate Manager under:

Current User → Personal → Certificates

The certificate details show:

“You have a private key that corresponds to this certificate.”

The certification path is also valid:

AKDCA Root → CERTILIA → Tihomir Vemenac (Signature)

Status:

“This certificate is OK.”

For testing, I disabled the timestamp server and tried to sign a simple local test PDF file from C:\Temp.

After clicking OK in PDF-XChange, signing fails with this error:

“An unexpected card error has occurred.”

The full message in PDF-XChange is:

“Sign Document:
Placing the signature failed.

Error [System]: An unexpected card error has occurred.”

I also ran:

certutil -scinfo

The smart card and certificates are detected, but the command ends with:

0x80090016 NTE_BAD_KEYSET
Keyset does not exist

The provider shown is:

Microsoft Smart Card Key Storage Provider

I have attached a simple test PDF file that I tried to sign.

Can you please advise whether PDF-XChange supports AKD Certilia Gen2 smart cards / HKIE certificates, and if there is any workaround, setting, diagnostic log, or preview build that I should try?

Thank you.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, TVelOs

Thank you for the report, I see that Dimitar provided these detials via email, but I wanted to make sure the same information is visible on the forums here for others experiencing the same issue:

Thank you for reaching out to us about this matter.

Our PDF‑XChange Editor currently has a known compatibility issue specifically with Certilia digital signature cards, and we are already in contact with their development team regarding this.

At the moment, versions 2 and 3 of their signature cards do not work correctly with our PDF Editor.

The error message you are seeing is triggered because the card driver fails to communicate with our application, which prevents the certificate from being loaded into the Windows Certificate Store.

Progress is being made, but we cannot offer a timeline for when this may begin to work again, or if the fix will come from their side, or our own.

Kind regards,