What it is
In plain words, before anything else.
Most businesses show their credentials as an image or a line of text on an about page. Both are trivially faked and neither can be confirmed by the person looking at them.
A verifiable credential is the same fact published so it can be checked: what it is, who issued it, when it expires, signed against your domain. The reader gets a yes or a no instead of a picture.
What it costs you
The loss you never see happen.
The years you spent earning the licence carry no weight with anybody who has not met you. That is most of the market.
It also leaves room for people who do not have one. If nobody's credential can be checked, claiming one costs nothing, and the honest business is the one that loses by it.
Check it yourself
Do not take our word for it. Look.
This takes about a minute, costs nothing, and needs no account with us or anybody else. A finding you have confirmed with your own eyes is the only kind worth acting on.
- 1
Look at how your licence or insurance appears on your own site.
- 2
If it is a picture, or a sentence saying you are licensed, ask yourself how a stranger would confirm it.
- 3
In almost every case the honest answer is that they would have to ring the regulator, and almost nobody does.
What we found
Out of 186 businesses we checked ourselves.
- 186 of 186
had no credential anybody could check by machine, including a whole cohort of licensed professionals whose licences are a matter of public record.
Counted from our own checks of 186 real businesses, measured on 2026-09-10, one count per business. No business is named and none of their reports is public. The full write ups are in what we found.
How we fix it
What we do, and what we leave alone.
We turn the credentials you actually hold into proofs anyone can check, tied to your identity key, with the expiry date carried along so an old one cannot quietly keep being shown.
We publish what you give us and confirm nothing we have not seen. A credential we cannot verify does not get published.
Next
The checks closest to this one.
- V4
Proving that something really came from your business
An invoice from you and a convincing fake from somebody else look exactly the same to the person holding one. - V3
Anyone can send email as you until you stop them
A stranger can send mail from your address today, to your customers, and it will look genuine. - V1
The padlock, and what happens to a business without one
Visitors get a warning. Careful software does not get a warning, it simply refuses.
Is this one open on your site?
The free check runs all sixteen against your own address and tells you which came back clean, in the same plain words as this page.
Free. No signup. Takes about a minute.