Marketplaces and trust platforms
The catalogue is not the hard part.
Getting two strangers to trust each other is.
Building a listings board is easy. The hard part is two people who have never met closing a deal worth tens of thousands: verifying who each one is, stopping them leaving the platform in the first message, giving disputes a route, and moving money without becoming a payment institution.
The four real problems
None of them is the product listing
A marketplace is a trust infrastructure with a catalogue on top. When one of these projects fails it is almost never because search was slow: it is because nobody solved one of these four.
Knowing who each party is
Biometric verification with document, selfie and liveness check. What matters is what is NOT stored: neither the image nor the document, only the verification status and the evidence of consent. Keeping your users' ID papers does not make you safer, it makes you more liable.
Keeping the deal on the platform
The moment two parties hit it off, they try to close over WhatsApp and the platform loses both its fee and its guarantees. Detection beats the usual evasions —numbers written as words, «at», «dot»— without wrongly blocking a nine-figure price, which is the classic failure of anyone who builds this with a careless regular expression.
A route when something goes wrong
A deal worth thousands between strangers ends in dispute sooner or later. Without a dispute queue with states and the power to suspend, that argument gets settled over email between three people and ends in poisoned reviews.
Moving money without being a bank
This is the legal trap. Holding third-party funds and splitting them turns the platform into a payment institution, with its licence and supervision. We integrate a gateway that already is one and split through it, with dual payment per country. It is an architectural decision, not a detail.
The line we do not cross
Your platform should not touch the money
It is the most uncomfortable conversation in these projects, and it is best had on day one. Holding a buyer's funds to pay the seller later is not a feature: it is payment-institution activity, with licence, minimum capital and supervision.
Plenty of platforms do it without realising, and get away with it until they grow enough for someone to notice. We integrate a gateway that already holds that status and run the split through it.
It is an architectural decision taken at the start, because changing it later means rebuilding the entire money flow.
Nor should you store ID documents
The temptation is to keep the ID «just in case». It does not make the platform safer: it makes it more liable and adds a breach surface it did not have before.
Reputation that can suspend, or it is not reputation
A star system with no consequences is decoration. Reputation works when it is tied to a dispute queue with states and the real power to suspend a party while it is resolved.
And it opens by agreement between the parties, not unilaterally: showing someone's history without their acceptance turns a trust tool into a pressure tool.
Frequently asked questions
What has to be decided before writing code
What is the hard part of building a marketplace?
Not the catalogue. Building a listings board is easy and takes weeks. The hard part is two strangers closing a deal worth tens of thousands without knowing each other: you need to verify who each one is, stop them leaving the platform in the first message, give disputes a route, and move money without becoming a payment institution. That is where the budget goes and where projects fail.
How do you verify identity without ending up storing ID documents?
With biometric document, selfie and liveness verification through a specialist provider, from which the platform receives only the result. Neither the image nor the document is stored: what is kept is the verification status and the evidence of consent. Keeping copies of ID papers does not add security, it adds liability and breach surface.
Can you stop buyer and seller closing the deal off-platform?
Not entirely, but you can make it costly and awkward. We detect attempts to exchange contact details, beating the usual evasions: numbers written as words, «at» instead of the symbol, «dot» instead of the character. The detail that matters is not wrongly blocking something legitimate, like a nine-figure price or a product reference containing numbers.
Can the platform handle payments between the parties?
Not directly, and anyone claiming otherwise is creating a regulatory problem. Holding third-party funds to split them later is payment-institution activity, subject to licence and supervision. What we do is integrate a gateway that already holds that status and run the split through it, with the payment method each country expects.
How does seller reputation work?
With reputation opened by agreement between the parties: shown when both accept, not unilaterally. And with a dispute queue with states that allows suspending a party while it is resolved. A star system with no power to suspend is not reputation, it is decoration.
Do you have a marketplace in production?
Yes, a vertical marketplace with identity verification, disintermediation control and integrated payments, running today. It is on the work page with its domain, and it opens.
Is it clear who holds the money on your platform?
If the answer is «we do», there is a conversation worth having before going further. Tell us what you want to build.
Tell us your case