Verification Standard

The guiding principle

TraIDCred never guarantees. TraIDCred verifies, reviews, confirms, records, timestamps, and displays information — as of a point in time, to the standard defined here.

Verification is an honest description of a review we actually performed. It is not a promise about the future, a rating of quality, an endorsement, or a warranty.

Words we may use (when objectively true, to the standard below)

verified · reviewed · confirmed · recorded · submitted · on file · timestamped · displayed · last reviewed on [date] · expires on [date]

Words we must NOT use or imply — unless objectively and provably true

guaranteed · certified · endorsed · warranted · continuously valid · always current · safest · best · recommended · approved by [an authority we did not consult] · insured (as a present-tense promise) · licensed (as our assurance rather than the state's)

These words shift a truthful "we reviewed a document" into a promise we cannot keep and create misrepresentation and consumer-protection exposure. Use them only where they are literally, currently true and we can prove it.

Shared definitions

• Verify / Review: A TraIDCred reviewer (today, a platform admin — manual) examined a

submitted document and determined it is the claimed credential type and appears facially valid and, where applicable, unexpired as of the review date.

• Confirm with source: Independently confirming a credential's standing with the issuing

authority, board, insurer, or certifying body. ⚠️ TraIDCred does not do this for any credential type. Not for business licenses, not for insurance, not for OSHA or trade certifications. Do not imply source confirmation we did not perform, in any surface, in any wording.

• The one adjacent thing TraIDCred does do is Identity Verification, where a third-party

provider confirms an identity against a government ID. That is a provider performing a check on its own systems — not TraIDCred consulting a public register — and it is scoped to identity alone.

• 🔮 If source confirmation is ever introduced, it would be a dated observation rather than a

monitoring service: a record of what a public register showed on the date a reviewer looked, to be displayed only with the authority named and the date checked, and never sourced from a third-party aggregator or a contractor-supplied screenshot. See _Verification method_ for the preconditions.

• Certify (a user certification): A statement a user makes about themselves, recorded by

TraIDCred with the signer's verified identity, the exact text, its version, and a timestamp. ⚠️ A certification is evidence that a representation was made — never evidence that it is true. TraIDCred does not verify the substance of any certification. See _Business-authority certification_.

• Record / Timestamp: We store what was submitted, who reviewed it, and when — an audit

trail, not a judgment of quality.

• Display: We show _status and non-sensitive metadata_ publicly; we never display the

document file, its contents, filename, storage path, reviewer notes, or reviewer identity.

Status vocabulary (applies to all credential types)

Public display vocabulary (homeowner-facing)

The statuses above are the internal vocabulary — they describe where a document sits in TraIDCred's review workflow. A homeowner is not a participant in that workflow, and does not need to distinguish "a document arrived" from "a reviewer has opened it". They need one thing: does TraIDCred currently verify this credential?

Public surfaces therefore display exactly four statuses, and no others:

"Information Not Available" is worded to describe TraIDCred's records, not the contractor. "Not provided" points at the business; "Not verified" invites the reading that something was checked and failed. Both are false: nothing was submitted, or nothing was evidenced, so nothing was reviewed. The status must never be rendered in a warning or error colour, since a colour that signals a problem contradicts the words.

Three consequences, each deliberate:

• **Rejected is displayed as Information Not Available, and is never distinguishable from

"nothing was submitted".** This follows directly from the rule above that rejected records are never displayed publicly. A homeowner learns that TraIDCred holds no information — true in both cases — and learns nothing about a private review decision.

• **A lawful Workers' Compensation exemption displays as Verified, not as a separate

"Exempt" status.** An exemption is a legitimate answer rather than a lesser one, and a distinct pill would read as a qualification on the verification. What was actually reviewed — an exemption document, not a policy — must be stated in that credential's disclosure.

• Absence of a situational insurance coverage still carries the "not evidenced" framing

required by _Certificates of Insurance as a shared source_, but that framing belongs in the credential's disclosure rather than on the face of the row. This is sound only because the public status is Information Not Available, which cannot be read as a finding on its own. If that status wording is ever changed to something with a negative sense, the not-evidenced framing must return to the visible row.

⚠️ "Not evidenced on the current certificate" may only be said when a certificate actually exists. Two different facts must never be conflated, and which applies is determined from the profile's own certificate record — never inferred from the coverage's absence alone:

Saying "not evidenced on the current certificate" when no certificate was ever supplied asserts a document that does not exist and implies a reviewer examined something and failed to find the coverage. Both are untrue, and the second reads as a finding against the contractor.

Publicly displaying any status outside these four — including any status not backed by stored data, such as "Not Applicable" — is a defect.

"Fully Verified" is a defined shorthand for a specific set only: the contractor/trade licensure requirement satisfied (see _Business Licenses — licensure eligibility_) + General Liability Insurance + Workers' Compensation each Verified and unexpired. A verified license document alone does not satisfy the licensure leg: the credential must additionally have been determined licensure-eligible by TraIDCred review — a verified municipal/general business license is a true, displayable credential that does not. "Fully Verified" is not a statement that every possible credential is held, nor a rating, endorsement, or guarantee. It must always be presented with the Verification Completion framing (progress through a process — never a trust score).

Verification method (current reality)

Every credential document — business licenses, insurance certificates, W-9, OSHA and other certificates — is reviewed manually by a platform admin, with no automated verification and no source confirmation with any issuing authority, board, insurer, or certifying body.

There are exactly two exceptions:

1. Identity Verification, performed by a third-party provider (Stripe Identity), supported

by TraIDCred's own automated name comparison with manual review of uncertain cases. See that section for exactly what it does and does not establish.

1. The licensing-authority lookup used only for License Qualifier Verification (see that

section). A TraIDCred reviewer may consult the licensing authority's public license lookup and transcribe what it shows — including the individual the authority names as the license qualifier — recording the reviewer's identity and the lookup date. ⚠️ This is an internal comparison input, not a public claim: nothing transcribed from the authority's record is displayed publicly, no credential's public status says or implies "confirmed with the authority," and the transcription reflects the authority's public lookup as of its date only. Every "NEVER use" rule about authority confirmation continues to bind every public and customer-facing surface.

⚠️ BUSINESS-LICENSE SOURCE CONFIRMATION IS NOT PERFORMED, and this section must not say otherwise until it is. Between 2026-08-03 and 2026-08-11 this document described source confirmation as a live, recorded, publicly displayed step for every business license in every jurisdiction. It was never built. There is no confirmation field on any table, no admin capture surface, nothing published beside a licence, and contractor_licenses — which holds issuing_authority and license_number — is read by no application code and granted to anon nowhere. The claim was therefore unevidenceable, and it contradicted five surfaces that correctly said the opposite (the credential disclosure, the public-profile explainer, the Homeowner FAQ, the published copy of this document, and Verification Program Terms §3.1(c)).

The reversal is recorded rather than deleted because the change-control rule below cuts both ways: this document changed first when the capability was believed to exist, and it changes first now that the belief has been checked against the schema.

🔮 If PUBLIC source confirmation is built later, it is this section — and the _Business Licenses_ section — that change first, before any product wording, and only once (a) a reviewer's confirmation is stored with the authority named, the confirmation date, and the reviewer's identity; (b) a public view enforces the display rules; and (c) an absent public verification method is recorded as absent rather than silently omitted. The same applies to AI-assisted document review. The internal qualifier lookup above satisfies (a) and deliberately stops there: it creates no public confirmation claim of any kind, and building one remains gated on (b) and (c).

Background Checks remain not yet available and are shown honestly as such.

Point-in-time & re-verification (general rule)

Every "Verified" status is a point-in-time result tied to a last-reviewed date. It does not track changes that happen after review (a license revoked by the state, a policy cancelled, coverage lapsed). Re-verification is required when: a document reaches its expiration date; the credential is replaced/updated; or TraIDCred requests re-submission. Public wording must always expose the last-reviewed date and, where applicable, the expiration date.

# Credential types

Each section below uses the same ten-point template. Where a type's behavior isn't yet built, it is labeled (future) and the standard governs how we may speak about it in the meantime.

Business Licenses

• Evidence collected: The tradesperson's business/contractor license document(s), each with

a human-readable label (e.g., issuing state/jurisdiction). Multiple licenses are supported; each is an independent record with its own status and expiration. The contractor may also declare what kind of license they believe it is (including an honest "not sure") — a declaration, never a verified fact.

• A reviewer additionally records structured facts in contractor_licenses: jurisdiction,

issuing authority, license number, holder, the credential category (contractor/trade license vs business license vs professional license vs registration vs other), the classification(s) verbatim as the authority states them, and — for License Qualifier Verification only — facts transcribed from the licensing authority's public lookup, including the authority-named qualifier, with the reviewer's identity and the lookup date recorded. Three provenances are kept permanently distinct and never collapse: what the business declared, what AI suggested from the document image (a suggestion only, admin- and owner-suggestion-surfaces only, never authoritative, never public), and what the reviewer established. ⚠️ The qualifier transcription and every internal eligibility mechanic remain private; the reviewer-established category, classification(s), issuing authority and license number may be displayed as described under _Displayed publicly_.

• **Credential category & licensure eligibility — DOCUMENT VERIFIED ≠ LICENSURE REQUIREMENT

SATISFIED. A credential may be genuine, current, and Verified while being ineligible** to satisfy TraIDCred's contractor/trade licensure requirement. A municipal/general business license authorizes operating a business; it does not by itself evidence authorization to perform a regulated construction trade. Both are legitimate credentials; they answer different questions. Therefore:

• Licensure eligibility is its own reviewer-determined fact with three honest states —

satisfies / does not satisfy / not yet determined — recorded per credential with the determining reviewer and timestamp. "Not yet determined" never satisfies (fail closed). It is never inferred from document approval, the filename, the contractor's label or declaration, an AI suggestion, or the presence of the word "license" — and never decided by a naive "city license vs state license" rule, since jurisdictions regulate contractors differently.

• The business's licensure standing ("License Verified" on any surface) requires at least

one standing (approved, lifecycle-active, unexpired) license credential that has been determined licensure-eligible — AND whose authority-recorded licensee has an established business↔licensee relationship to the business (next bullet). If the only eligible credential expires, is revoked, or has its eligibility corrected to "does not satisfy", licensure standing ends — even while a verified, non-eligible business license truthfully remains displayed as a verified credential. This rule is enforced at the database/public-view boundary, not merely in UI.

• **Business ↔ licensee relationship — a credential can be genuine without belonging to the

business presenting it. The licensing authority records each license under a licensee (a legal entity or individual), which is not always the customer-facing business name — a registered DBA/assumed name is the common legitimate case. A license may satisfy the licensure requirement only when BOTH hold independently: the credential qualifies under everything above, and the authority-recorded licensee either is the business itself or has an acceptable, authoritatively established legal relationship to it (exact legal entity, registered DBA/assumed name, legal name change, or another authoritatively established relationship). An absent or unresolved relationship never satisfies (fail closed)**.

• What establishes it: a reviewer determination grounded in an authoritative source

(preferred: the relevant government business registry), recorded with the source, the registry's entity identifier where available, and — for every human determination of a non-obvious relationship — a durable evidence artifact (a captured copy of the authoritative record, or an admin-reviewed, approved relationship document the contractor provided). The platform may itself establish the same-entity case through conservative, deterministic name normalization (case, punctuation, whitespace, "&"/"and", and recognized corporate-suffix formatting or omission — e.g. "ABC Roofing" and "ABC Roofing LLC"), recorded as a system determination that is auditable and automatically void if the underlying names later change.

• What can NEVER establish it: a shared owner, uploader, representative, address, phone,

email, or license qualifier; fuzzy name similarity or any similarity threshold; an AI suggestion; or a contractor declaration. A qualifier can never bridge an otherwise unrelated business to a license.

• Verified business identity: once TraIDCred has verified credentials against a business

identity, the business name is a controlled field. Changing it — including adopting the authority-recorded licensee name — is a governed, recorded action that triggers re-evaluation of identity-tied credentials (at minimum the contractor license relationship and insurance certificates); verified credentials do not continue supporting public claims under a materially different identity without re-review. Prior names, documents, and determinations are preserved, never deleted.

• There is currently no "not required"/exemption path for the licensure requirement; if a

jurisdiction/trade legitimately requires no trade license, that is a product gap to be addressed by an explicit mechanism — never by treating a business license as qualifying.

• What TraIDCred verifies: That each submitted document appears to be a business/contractor

license of the claimed jurisdiction and is facially valid/unexpired as of review; and, where a business↔licensee relationship statement is displayed, that the stated relationship was established from the recorded authoritative source as described above. Nothing more.

• What TraIDCred does NOT verify: ⚠️ **That the license is genuine, or currently active or in

good standing at any time — TraIDCred does not monitor licenses and receives no notice of change, and no public status ever claims authority confirmation. Also not verified: scope of work permitted; that the license covers the specific job a homeowner needs; whether any individual works under a qualifier; whether any representative personally holds or works under the license; whether the business is legally entitled to operate under it. Who qualifies the business** is not verified by the license review either — the ONLY thing TraIDCred can establish about a qualifier is the internal, non-public comparison chain defined in _License Qualifier Verification_, and nothing else may be said or implied about it.

• Method: Manual (admin review) of the submitted document. ⚠️ **There is no integration with

any licensing body**, and the only authority-record touchpoint anywhere in the license path is the reviewer's internal qualifier-lookup transcription described above — which produces no public claim.

• ⚠️ The qualifier gate: when the reviewer's authority transcription names a qualifier, the

license cannot be approved — held pending, never rejected for this reason alone — until the qualifier chain concludes (matched, or the reviewer records that no qualifier requirement applies). This is enforced in the database with no administrator exemption.

• Point-in-time: Yes — the review reflects the last-reviewed date only.
• Re-verification required: On expiration, replacement, or TraIDCred request.
• Displayed publicly: Yes — one card per publicly visible, non-rejected license, showing label,

derived status, expiration, and last-reviewed. Rejected licenses are excluded and never public. File/contents never shown. Once — and only once — a TraIDCred reviewer has recorded the authority facts, the card may additionally display the reviewer-established credential category (e.g. "Contractor License" vs "Business License"), issuing authority, classification(s) verbatim, license number, and the authority-recorded licensee name — which is shown, never hidden, when it materially differs from the business name (hiding it would make the verification misleading). When an acceptable relationship has been established, the card may state it in plain registry language (e.g. a registered DBA of the licensee); an unresolved relationship states nothing. The card may also carry an admin-recorded licensing-authority link — labeled "View license record" only when it resolves to the authority's record for that specific license, and "Verify with licensing authority" when it is the authority's lookup/verification service; HTTPS-only, recorded and audited by a reviewer, never contractor- or AI-supplied. ⚠️ These are reviewer-recorded facts from TraIDCred's own review and must always appear beside the not-confirmed-with-authority disclaimer — never presented as a register check TraIDCred did not perform. Never displayed: AI suggestions or confidence, the contractor's declaration, the internal eligibility states, reviewer identity, or any review mechanics. A card with no recorded authority facts shows none — absence renders as absence, never a guess from the contractor's label.

• ⚠️ Business licensing information must be visually separated from representative information,

and must never be presented so as to imply that a representative personally holds or works under the license.

• Required disclaimers:
• "Reviewed by TraIDCred as of [date]; not confirmed with the issuing authority. Verify current

standing directly with the state board."

• Wherever license information appears alongside a representative: "Business licensing information

describes the business. It does not indicate which individual personally holds or works under the displayed contractor license."

• The scope warning, wherever "License Verified" could reasonably be read as "this

contractor is legally qualified for my specific project" (at minimum the verified license disclosure): "License classifications define the scope of work a contractor is authorized to perform. Before hiring, confirm that the contractor's classification covers the specific work your project requires." Calm and informational — TraIDCred makes no project-specific legal determination.

• The project-suitability limitation, in the disclosure of every verified license:

"License verification confirms the licensing information shown was verified against available records. TraIDCred does not determine or guarantee that a license or classification is appropriate, sufficient, or legally required for your specific project. Licensing requirements vary by project, location, and scope of work. Confirm requirements with the applicable licensing authority before hiring."

• Acceptable wording: "Business License — Verified (reviewed [date], expires [date])"; "License

document reviewed and on file."

• NEVER use: "State-certified," "guaranteed licensed," "license confirmed active,"

"government-verified," "checked against the issuing authority's records," "confirmed with [authority]," or any other wording asserting a check TraIDCred does not perform, any present-tense promise the license is currently valid, "licensed representative," "working under [name]'s license," or any wording implying TraIDCred determined the business is legally authorized to operate.

License Qualifier Verification (internal-only — NOT a credential, NOT displayed)

A license qualifier is, in most licensing systems, the individual who demonstrated the competence (examination, experience, or both) under which a business holds its contractor license (e.g., Utah Admin. Code R156-55a-102: "the individual who demonstrates competence for a contractor license by satisfying the requirements to obtain the contractor license"). The qualifier is frequently not the business owner and frequently does not appear on the license document image — they become visible only on the licensing authority's record.

• Evidence collected: Five independent facts, none of which ever substitutes for another:

1. the business's claim — who the business says its qualifier is (or the owner's claim that

it is themselves), recorded at activation;

1. for a third-party qualifier, that person's own affirmative preliminary authorization —

they were shown the business, the license, and what TraIDCred would do, and voluntarily agreed to proceed (with a first-class decline path requiring no identity verification);

1. their own Identity Verification (see that section), belonging to their own person record

— never the owner's, never a representative's — and preceded by a separately recorded biometric notice and written release: the person is shown, on TraIDCred's own pages, what biometric processing the verification involves, by whom, for what purpose, and under what retention schedule (the published Biometric Information Policy), and executes an affirmative release on its own dedicated control. No verification session for a qualifier is created before that release is recorded — enforced in the database, with the exact notice text and version stored immutably;

1. their final electronic authorization, executed after identity verification and rendered

with the verified legal name, stored as an immutable signed record;

1. the reviewer's transcription of the authority-named qualifier from the licensing

authority's public lookup, with reviewer identity and lookup date.

• What TraIDCred verifies: That the identified, verified individual affirmatively authorized

the qualifier relationship, and that their verified name reasonably matches the individual the licensing authority's public record named as qualifier as of the lookup date. The name comparison is automated and conservative: legitimate differences (middle names, maiden names, formatting) are decided by a TraIDCred reviewer, never silently rejected and never silently treated as the same person.

• What TraIDCred does NOT verify: Whether the qualifier relationship satisfies any legal

requirement; whether the individual currently performs any statutory qualifier duties; whether the association continues after the lookup date (licensing law lets qualifiers disassociate, and TraIDCred receives no notice); the business's legal entitlement to operate. TraIDCred does not issue licenses, appoint qualifiers, or determine legal licensing authority.

• Method: The five-fact chain above — authorization + third-party identity provider + internal

authority-lookup comparison. Neither pure manual review nor a provider check alone.

• Point-in-time: Yes — every fact carries its own date, and the comparison speaks as of the

lookup date only. The final authorization is a dated affirmation, not a continuing promise, and is prospectively revocable.

• Re-verification required: When the authority record is re-transcribed and names a different

qualifier, when the business names a different qualifier (a NEW request — a ceremony is never rewritten from one human to another), or when the underlying identity verification is revoked.

• Displayed publicly: 🚫 Never. No qualifier name, email, status, request, authorization,

identity result, or match state appears on any public surface, in any badge, or in any wording. The chain's only effect is internal: a license whose authority transcription names a qualifier is not approvable until the chain concludes.

• What completing the ceremony does NOT do: It creates no business membership, ownership,

representative status, dashboard access, or account authority of any kind for the qualifier, and it makes no statement by or about the licensing authority.

• Required disclaimers (ceremony surfaces): TraIDCred is a private company, not affiliated

with, endorsed by, or acting for any licensing authority; official verification of a license is available only from the licensing authority; the comparison reflects the authority's public record as of a stated date.

• NEVER use: "Verified qualifier" (publicly, in any form), "state-approved qualifier,"

"confirmed with [authority]," "TraIDCred determined [person] is authorized to qualify this business," or any wording implying the ceremony grants, confirms, or constitutes legal qualifier status.

General Liability Insurance

• Evidence collected: A Certificate of Insurance (COI) or policy document showing carrier,

policy number/limits, and effective/expiration dates.

• What TraIDCred verifies: That the submitted document appears to be a general-liability COI

and is facially valid/unexpired as of review.

• What TraIDCred does NOT verify: That coverage is currently in force (policies can lapse or

be cancelled anytime); adequacy or suitability of limits; exclusions; that a homeowner's specific loss would be covered; authenticity with the carrier.

• Method: Manual (admin review).
• Point-in-time: Yes — a COI is a snapshot; strongly emphasize this.
• Re-verification required: On expiration (track policy expiration), replacement, or request.
• Displayed publicly: Yes — status + effective/expiration + last-reviewed. File never shown. §153: the reviewer-confirmed limits, verbatim as listed on the certificate, may additionally be displayed — inside the credential's disclosure only, never on the row face, always beside the not-confirmed-with-carrier disclaimer and a statement that TraIDCred does not assess their adequacy for any project. Carrier and policy number remain unpublished.
• Required disclaimers: "Insurance certificate reviewed as of [date]; coverage may change or

lapse at any time and is not confirmed with the carrier. Confirm current coverage directly."

• Acceptable wording: "General Liability — Verified (COI reviewed [date], listed expiration

[date])"; "Certificate of insurance on file."

• NEVER use: "Insured" (as a present-tense guarantee), "guaranteed coverage," "fully

covered," "carrier-confirmed," "continuously insured."

Workers' Compensation

• Evidence collected: A workers' compensation COI or coverage document (carrier, policy,

effective/expiration), or a lawful exemption document where applicable.

• What TraIDCred verifies: That the submitted document appears to be workers'-comp coverage

(or a valid exemption) and is facially valid/unexpired as of review.

• What TraIDCred does NOT verify: Current in-force status; that all workers/subs are covered;

state-specific compliance; authenticity with the carrier or state fund.

• Method: Manual (admin review).
• Point-in-time: Yes.
• Re-verification required: On expiration, replacement, or request.
• Displayed publicly: Yes — status + expiration + last-reviewed. File never shown. §153: the reviewer-confirmed limits, verbatim as listed on the certificate, may additionally be displayed — inside the credential's disclosure only, never on the row face, always beside the not-confirmed-with-carrier disclaimer and a statement that TraIDCred does not assess their adequacy for any project. Carrier and policy number remain unpublished.
• Required disclaimers: "Workers' compensation document reviewed as of [date]; not confirmed

with the carrier or state; coverage may change."

• Acceptable wording: "Workers' Comp — Verified (reviewed [date], listed expiration [date])."
• NEVER use: "Guaranteed covered," "all employees insured," "state-confirmed coverage."

Commercial Auto Liability

• Evidence collected: A Certificate of Insurance showing a commercial automobile liability

line, with carrier, policy number/limits, and effective/expiration dates. Ordinarily the same certificate that evidences General Liability — see Certificates of Insurance as a shared source below.

• What TraIDCred verifies: That the submitted certificate appears to show a commercial auto

liability line and that it is facially valid/unexpired as of review.

• What TraIDCred does NOT verify: That coverage is currently in force; which vehicles or

drivers are covered; whether hired/non-owned use is included; adequacy of limits; exclusions; authenticity with the carrier.

• Method: Manual (admin review).
• Point-in-time: Yes — a COI is a snapshot.
• Re-verification required: On expiration, replacement of the certificate, or request.
• Displayed publicly: Yes — status + expiration + last-reviewed. File never shown. §153: the reviewer-confirmed limits, verbatim as listed on the certificate, may additionally be displayed — inside the credential's disclosure only, never on the row face, always beside the not-confirmed-with-carrier disclaimer and a statement that TraIDCred does not assess their adequacy for any project. Carrier and policy number remain unpublished.
• Optional / situational: Yes. Commercial auto is typically carried by contractors who

own or operate company vehicles, and is not applicable to every contractor. Its absence must never be displayed as a deficiency, only as not evidenced.

• Required disclaimers: "Commercial auto coverage reviewed as of [date] from the certificate

provided; not confirmed with the carrier and may change or lapse at any time."

• Acceptable wording: "Commercial Auto — Verified (COI reviewed [date], listed expiration

[date])"; "Not evidenced on the current certificate."

• NEVER use: "Fully covered vehicles," "all drivers insured," "carrier-confirmed," or any

wording implying a contractor without it is unqualified or non-compliant.

Umbrella / Excess Liability

• Evidence collected: A Certificate of Insurance showing an umbrella or excess liability

line, with carrier, policy number/limits, and effective/expiration dates. Ordinarily the same certificate that evidences General Liability — see Certificates of Insurance as a shared source below.

• What TraIDCred verifies: That the submitted certificate appears to show an umbrella or

excess liability line and that it is facially valid/unexpired as of review.

• What TraIDCred does NOT verify: That coverage is currently in force; which underlying

policies it sits above; whether it would respond to any particular loss; adequacy of limits; exclusions; authenticity with the carrier.

• Method: Manual (admin review).
• Point-in-time: Yes.
• Re-verification required: On expiration, replacement of the certificate, or request.
• Displayed publicly: Yes — status + expiration + last-reviewed. File never shown. §153: the reviewer-confirmed limits, verbatim as listed on the certificate, may additionally be displayed — inside the credential's disclosure only, never on the row face, always beside the not-confirmed-with-carrier disclaimer and a statement that TraIDCred does not assess their adequacy for any project. Carrier and policy number remain unpublished.
• Optional / situational: Yes. Umbrella coverage is commonly carried by larger

contractors or businesses with higher liability exposure; many small residential contractors do not carry it. Its absence must never be displayed as a deficiency, only as not evidenced.

• Required disclaimers: "Umbrella/excess coverage reviewed as of [date] from the certificate

provided; not confirmed with the carrier and may change or lapse at any time."

• Acceptable wording: "Umbrella Liability — Verified (COI reviewed [date], listed expiration

[date])"; "Not evidenced on the current certificate."

• NEVER use: "Unlimited coverage," "fully protected," "carrier-confirmed," or any wording

implying a contractor without it is unqualified or under-insured.

Certificates of Insurance as a shared source

A single Certificate of Insurance customarily evidences several coverage lines at once. TraIDCred therefore collects one certificate from a contractor and a reviewer confirms, from that one document, which coverage lines it evidences.

This governs how those confirmations may be described:

• Each coverage remains a separate verification with its own status, its own listed

expiration, and its own review record. A COI routinely carries different expiration dates per line, and those differences must be preserved and displayed, never flattened to a single date.

• Confirming one line says nothing about any other. A certificate evidencing General

Liability and Workers' Compensation establishes nothing about commercial auto or umbrella coverage, and the absence of those lines must be shown as not evidenced on the current certificate — never as expired, rejected, missing, or deficient.

• The method disclosure stays accurate. Every coverage confirmed this way was established by

a person at TraIDCred reading the certificate the business provided. It remains manual review of a contractor-supplied document, with no carrier contact, and must be described as such.

• A replacement certificate re-opens every line. When a contractor submits a new certificate,

coverages it does not evidence must stop being displayed as verified. They revert to not evidenced; the prior confirmation is retained as history, not as a current claim.

• AI extraction, if introduced, does not change any of the above and must be recorded here

first per Change control. Extraction may only pre-fill a reviewer's form; a person confirms before anything is displayed publicly.

W-9

• Evidence collected: A completed IRS Form W-9 (business/tax identification). May contain a

SSN or EIN — sensitive; minimize retention and never display.

• What TraIDCred verifies: That a W-9 was submitted and is on file (present and facially a

W-9). This is a records credential, not a validity judgment.

• What TraIDCred does NOT verify: The accuracy of the TIN/SSN/EIN; IRS validity; tax status;

anything about the business's tax compliance.

• Method: Manual (receipt/records check).
• Point-in-time: Yes (as submitted).
• Re-verification required: On replacement or request; no inherent expiration.
• Displayed publicly: No — never. W-9 is internal/optional; treat contents as sensitive

PII. At most, an internal "on file" indicator; do not expose tax numbers anywhere.

• Required disclaimers: (Internal) "W-9 on file; TIN not validated with the IRS."
• Acceptable wording: (Non-public) "W-9 on file."
• NEVER use: Any public display of the W-9, TIN, SSN, or EIN; "tax-verified"; "IRS-confirmed."

OSHA Certifications

• Evidence collected: An OSHA training certificate (e.g., OSHA 10/30) with holder name,

course, and date.

• What TraIDCred verifies: That a document appearing to be an OSHA training certificate was

submitted and is on file as of review.

• What TraIDCred does NOT verify: Authenticity with the training provider/OSHA; that the

certificate is current or that competency is maintained; that it applies to the specific work.

• Method: Manual (admin review). Optional credential.
• Point-in-time: Yes.
• Re-verification required: On replacement or request; note some OSHA trainings have no

formal expiration but may be re-taken.

• Displayed publicly: Optional/if provided — status + last-reviewed only; file never shown.
• Required disclaimers: "OSHA training certificate reviewed as of [date]; not confirmed with

the provider or OSHA."

• Acceptable wording: "OSHA training certificate on file (reviewed [date])."
• NEVER use: "OSHA-certified by TraIDCred," "guaranteed safety," "safest," "OSHA-confirmed."

Trade Certifications

Product-accuracy note: As of the current build, "Trade Certifications" is not a distinct credential type in the product; such documents are captured under the Other Credentials type with a descriptive label. This section governs how we speak about them; it does not represent that a separate "Trade Certification" verification flow exists today.

• Evidence collected: Trade/skill certifications or licenses (e.g., electrical, plumbing,

HVAC) submitted as "Other" or a labeled credential, each with a label.

• What TraIDCred verifies: That the submitted document appears to be the claimed

certification and is facially valid/unexpired as of review.

• What TraIDCred does NOT verify: Authenticity with the certifying body; current standing;

scope; equivalence across jurisdictions.

• Method: Manual (admin review).
• Point-in-time: Yes.
• Re-verification required: On expiration (if any), replacement, or request.
• Displayed publicly: If provided and non-rejected — label + status + last-reviewed;

file never shown.

• Required disclaimers: "Certification document reviewed as of [date]; not confirmed with

the issuing body."

• Acceptable wording: "[Trade] certification reviewed and on file (reviewed [date])."
• NEVER use: "Master-certified by TraIDCred," "guaranteed qualified," "endorsed [trade]

professional."

Identity Verification

• Status today: LIVE. Performed by Stripe Identity, a third-party identity-verification

provider. Stripe collects the government ID and selfie directly on Stripe-hosted pages; TraIDCred never receives, stores, or displays those images.

• Evidence collected: A government-issued photo ID and a matching selfie, captured and

retained by Stripe. TraIDCred receives only: the verification status, timestamps, Stripe's machine-readable error code, and — on success only — the verified first and last name.

• What TraIDCred verifies: Two things, both of which must hold:

1. Stripe confirmed the individual's identity against the document they presented, including

a selfie match to that document; and

1. **TraIDCred confirmed that the Stripe-verified name reasonably matches the name the

verification is for** — the representative name entered on the contractor profile, or, for a license qualifier's ceremony, the legal name that person confirmed as their own. This name comparison is automated, and is decided by a TraIDCred reviewer when the automated result is not clear-cut.

• Who may verify: An identity ceremony belongs to exactly one person record, permanently —

a business's representative verifying for public display, or a license qualifier verifying solely for the internal chain in _License Qualifier Verification_. A qualifier's ceremony produces no public display of any kind, requires no photograph, and never satisfies any requirement that belongs to a different person (an owner's identity requirement is satisfiable only by that owner's own verification, and vice versa).

• What TraIDCred does NOT verify: That the contractor-supplied public representative photo

depicts the verified individual — no biometric or facial comparison is performed between the public photo and Stripe's ID image or selfie, and none is implemented. Also not verified: character, licensure, insurance, competence, safety, workmanship, conduct, authority to act on any particular project, or anything beyond the identity check's defined output.

• Method: Third-party provider (Stripe Identity), plus TraIDCred's own name comparison —

automated with manual review of uncertain cases. Not TraIDCred's judgment of the person.

• Point-in-time: Yes — as of the verification date. Identity Verified is revoked automatically

if Stripe later invalidates or redacts the verification, or if the verified representative is replaced.

• Re-verification required: When the verified representative is replaced (treated as an entirely

new representative — verification is never transferred between individuals), or if Stripe invalidates the session.

• Displayed publicly: An "Identity Verified" indicator with the verification date, the

contractor-supplied representative name and title, and the contractor-supplied representative photo — and only when every one of these holds: Stripe status is verified, the name match is matched (automatically or by reviewer approval), the photo is approved by a TraIDCred reviewer, the contractor has not hidden it, and the profile is otherwise publicly eligible. If any condition stops holding, the entire section and the indicator disappear. Never displayed: the ID document or image, the selfie, date of birth, address, ID number, or the Stripe-verified name itself.

• Required disclaimers: "Identity verified via a third-party provider on [date]. TraIDCred

confirmed the verified name reasonably matched the representative named on this profile. The public photo was supplied by the contractor and was not compared against the provider's ID or selfie images. Not a statement about qualifications, conduct, or workmanship, and not the same as TraIDCred Verified."

• Acceptable wording: "Identity verified via third-party provider on [date]"; "identity-verified

representative"; "This is the identity-verified representative associated with this contractor profile."

• NEVER use: "Guaranteed identity"; "background-clear"; anything conflating identity with a

background check; any suggestion that the public photo was biometrically matched, facially compared, or checked against the ID or selfie; any suggestion that Stripe endorses the contractor; any suggestion that this individual personally performs every part of the work or that employees or subcontractors may not attend; and never "Verified" alone, which is reserved for the separate TraIDCred Verified designation.

What "Identity Verified" means — and does not mean

It means: the representative completed Stripe Identity verification; TraIDCred confirmed the verified name reasonably matched the representative name on the profile; and the representative therefore passed the identity-verification process defined here.

It does NOT mean: that the public photo was biometrically compared against Stripe's ID or selfie images (no such comparison exists); guaranteed workmanship; guaranteed conduct; guaranteed current or future licensing or insurance; authority to act on any particular future project; or overall TraIDCred Verified, which remains a separate designation earned through the core credentials (Business License + General Liability Insurance + Workers' Compensation) and is never granted by an identity check.

Representative photo (contractor-supplied — NOT a verified credential)

The public representative photo is uploaded by the contractor and is not a verified credential. TraIDCred reviews it only for suitability — that it plausibly shows one person, head and shoulders, rather than a logo, vehicle, jobsite, group, stock image, or someone else. That review is not an identity check and involves no comparison against any government ID or selfie. It is stored privately and served publicly only through the gate described above. Uploaded images are re-encoded on the server, which removes embedded metadata including any GPS location.

Background Checks (future)

• Status today: Not yet available. Shown honestly as "Coming soon"; do not imply results.
• Evidence collected (planned): A consumer report from a Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA)

under the FCRA.

• What TraIDCred will verify (planned): That a background check was ordered from a named CRA

with proper FCRA consent and returned a defined result.

• What TraIDCred will NOT verify: Future conduct; completeness/accuracy of the underlying

records; safety; suitability for a specific job.

• Method (planned): Third-party CRA (FCRA-regulated).
• Point-in-time: Yes — strictly as of the report date.
• Re-verification required: Per policy; consumer reports are per-order and time-bound.
• Displayed publicly (planned): Default: not public. Raw criminal-history data should not

be displayed publicly; at most a defined attestation, subject to counsel and FCRA/state law.

• Required disclaimers: "Background check performed by a third-party CRA on [date] under the

FCRA; a point-in-time result, not a prediction of conduct."

• Acceptable wording (only once live, per counsel): "Background check completed via

third-party CRA on [date]."

• NEVER use: Any claim while unavailable; "guaranteed safe," "cleared," "no risk,"

"trustworthy" as a result of the check; public display of criminal history.

Other Credentials

• Evidence collected: Any additional document a tradesperson provides, submitted with a

descriptive label.

• What TraIDCred verifies: That a labeled document was submitted and is on file; a facial

review only.

• What TraIDCred does NOT verify: Authenticity, validity, currency, or relevance beyond the

facial review.

• Method: Manual (admin review).
• Point-in-time: Yes.
• Re-verification required: On replacement or request.
• Displayed publicly: If provided and non-rejected — label + status + last-reviewed; file

never shown.

• Required disclaimers: "Document reviewed and on file as of [date]; contents not

independently confirmed."

• Acceptable wording: "[Label] — reviewed and on file (reviewed [date])."
• NEVER use: "Verified authentic," "guaranteed," "endorsed," or any claim stronger than "we

reviewed and recorded this document."

# Business-authority certification (NOT a credential)

This is not a credential type and produces no public claim. It is defined here because it is the mechanism by which a person asserts authority to act for a business, and because it must never be described as something TraIDCred verified.

• What it is: Before performing any action that changes what a homeowner is asked to trust, an

individual must (1) complete Identity Verification, (2) state their business title, and (3) electronically certify that they are authorized to act for the business.

• What TraIDCred verifies: Who made the certification (by verified identity), when they

made it, what title they stated, and exactly what text they certified — preserved with its version and a content hash.

• What TraIDCred does NOT verify: ⚠️ **That the person actually has authority to act for the

business.** TraIDCred does not read operating agreements, confirm employment, or apply agency law. It does not verify the person's title, their employment, or the truth of anything they certify.

• Method: Recorded user certification, bound to a verified identity. **Not a review, and not a

third-party verification.**

• Point-in-time: Yes — a certification speaks as of its date. It is not re-confirmed by the

passage of time.

• Re-certification required: On a material change to the certification wording.
• Displayed publicly: 🚫 Never. No certification, title, or any fact derived from one appears

on a public profile.

• Required disclaimers: None public, because nothing is published.
• Acceptable wording (internal and contractor-facing only): "Certified by [verified individual]

on [date]."

• NEVER use: "TraIDCred verified this person's authority"; "authorized representative of the

business" as a TraIDCred finding; any public statement implying corporate authority was checked.

⚠️ A stated business title is evidence, never a permission. Titles are recorded as part of the certification and must never grant application privileges. Permissions are assigned by the application independently of anything a user states about themselves.

Public-display invariant (all types)

We display status and non-sensitive metadata only — label, derived status, expiration, and last-reviewed date — plus, for Identity Verification only, the contractor-supplied representative name, title, and photograph, subject to the full gate in that section. We never publicly display the document file, its contents, filename, storage path, reviewer notes, reviewer identity, tax numbers, ID numbers, or background-check details. Rejected records are private. Nothing from License Qualifier Verification is ever displayed publicly — no qualifier name, email, request, authorization, identity outcome, match state, or authority transcription. This invariant is a hard rule and matches the product's built-in privacy behavior.

Change control

This is a versioned document. Any change to what a credential type verifies — including adding automation, AI review, or third-party/source confirmation — must be made here first, then propagated to the Terms of Service, Verification Program Terms, public wording, badges, help content, and SOPs.

_Last updated: 2026-09-02, version 1.5 (Business ↔ licensee relationship, project-suitability limitation, authority link: licensure standing now additionally requires that the authority-recorded licensee be the business itself or have an acceptable, authoritatively established relationship to it (registered DBA, legal name change, or other authoritative relationship) — absent/unresolved fails closed, and owner/qualifier/uploader identity or name similarity can never establish it. The public license card may display the authority-recorded licensee (always shown when materially different), a plain-language statement of an established relationship, and an admin-recorded HTTPS licensing-authority link with its two distinct CTAs. Two new required disclosures: the project-suitability limitation on every verified license, and the governed verified-business-name rules — a verified business name is a controlled field whose change triggers re-evaluation of identity-tied credentials.)_

Previously: 2026-09-02, version 1.4 (Coverage limits displayed publicly, in the disclosure: for the four insurance coverage types, the reviewer-confirmed limits string — exactly as the admin recorded it from the certificate at COI review, never AI output — may be displayed inside the credential's disclosure, beside the not-confirmed disclaimer and an explicit no-adequacy-judgment statement. Never on the face of the row; carrier and policy number remain unpublished. No change to what any credential type verifies.)_

Previously: 2026-09-02, version 1.3 (License classification & licensure eligibility: a verified license DOCUMENT no longer satisfies the licensure requirement by itself. Each license credential now carries a reviewer-established credential category (contractor/trade license vs business/professional/registration/other), verbatim classification(s), and a separate three-state licensure-eligibility determination — satisfies / does not satisfy / not yet determined, with "not yet determined" never satisfying (fail closed) and the determination never inferred from approval, labels, filenames, AI suggestions, or a naive city/state rule. "Fully Verified" and every "License Verified" surface now require a standing licensure-eligible credential, enforced at the public-view boundary. _Displayed publicly_ is amended: the reviewer-established category, classification(s), issuing authority and license number MAY now be displayed beside the not-confirmed disclaimer (reversing the 1.x display prohibition for reviewer-recorded facts only — AI suggestions, declarations, eligibility states and review mechanics stay private). The scope warning is added as a required disclaimer. Provenance — business-declared vs AI-suggested vs reviewer-established — is stated as permanently distinct, and admin corrections to category/classification/eligibility are auditable with the acting administrator recorded.)_

Previously: 2026-08-25, version 1.2 (Biometric notice & written release added to the qualifier chain: before any qualifier verification session is created, the person is shown a separate Biometric Information Notice on TraIDCred's pages and executes an affirmative written release on its own dedicated control — recorded immutably (exact text, version, hash) and enforced in the database, per the published Biometric Information Policy. Drafted under the conservative posture that initiating a biometric verification for TraIDCred's own purpose may be treated as TraIDCred collecting biometric identifiers, WITHOUT overclaiming possession: TraIDCred receives and stores no biometric data of any kind.)_

Previously: 2026-08-25, version 1.1 (License Qualifier Verification added as an internal-only, non-credential, never-displayed chain: the business's claim, the qualifier's own affirmative two-act authorization (preliminary consent before their identity ceremony; a final signed authorization executed with the verified legal name after it), their own Identity Verification belonging to their own person record, and a reviewer transcription of the licensing authority's public lookup, conservatively name-compared with human review of legitimate differences. _Verification method_ now records exactly two exceptions to pure manual review — Stripe Identity, and this internal qualifier lookup, which creates no public authority- confirmation claim; the preconditions for any future PUBLIC source confirmation are unchanged. _Identity Verification_ is generalized to one-person-permanently ceremonies that include a qualifier's non-displayed ceremony, and states that no person's verification can satisfy a requirement belonging to a different person. The database-enforced, no-admin-exemption qualifier approval gate is stated under _Business Licenses_. The public-display invariant now names the qualifier chain as never displayed.)_

Previously: 2026-08-11 (this document now states, for every credential type, that TraIDCred does not confirm anything with an issuing authority, board, insurer, or certifying body. An internal revision dated 2026-08-03 had described business-license source confirmation as a live step; it was never built, and the position is restored here across _Verification method_, _"Confirm with source"_ and the whole _Business Licenses_ section. License number and classifications are stated as not publicly displayed: they are read off a contractor-supplied document, and a number shown beside a status invites a reader to assume it was checked against a register. "Confirmed with [authority]" and "checked against the issuing authority's records" are added to NEVER use. Preconditions for ever introducing source confirmation are stated in _Verification method_.)

Previously: 2026-08-03. Added Business-authority certification as an explicitly non-credential section: TraIDCred verifies who certified, when, what title they stated and exactly what text they signed — and verifies nothing about whether the authority claimed is real. Nothing about it is ever published, and a stated title is evidence that must never grant application permissions. Also added "Certify" to Shared definitions: a certification is evidence that a representation was made, never evidence that it is true. Previously: 2026-08-01 (added Public display vocabulary, defining the four homeowner-facing statuses — Verified, Under Review, Expired, Information Not Available — and how the internal statuses map onto them: Rejected displays as Information Not Available and stays indistinguishable from "not started", a lawful Workers' Compensation exemption displays as Verified with the exemption explained in its disclosure, and the not-evidenced framing moves into that coverage's disclosure — permissible only because the status itself is neutral. Also separated "no certificate provided" from "certificate provided but this coverage absent", which are different facts and must never share wording. No change to what any credential type verifies. Previously: 2026-07-30 (added Commercial Auto Liability and Umbrella / Excess Liability as credential types, both explicitly optional/situational; added "Certificates of Insurance as a shared source", governing how one certificate may evidence several coverage lines, how per-line expirations must be preserved, how an unevidenced line must be described, and that AI extraction may only pre-fill a reviewer's form. Earlier the same day: Identity Verification moved from planned to LIVE via Stripe Identity; added the verified-name matching requirement, the representative photo as a contractor-supplied non-credential, and the explicit means/does-not-mean definition; public-display invariant amended to permit the representative name, title and photograph under the stated gate))._