There's a thing that happens on a lot of marketplaces. You see a "Verified" badge next to a profile, and you assume it means something. Then you find out the verification was an automatic email confirmation and the badge gets handed out to anyone who signs up. The word stops meaning anything, but it keeps showing up — on every listing — because removing it would look like a downgrade.
We don't want to do that.
The badge on a Welper's profile means one thing: a third-party criminal record check came back clear.
It's a Basic Canadian criminal record check, run by Certn, our screening partner. Certn confirms the Welper's identity as part of that screening and searches the criminal record databases available to them. When the result comes back clear, the badge appears on the profile. That's the whole claim.
It does not mean we've rated them five stars. It does not mean they're insured. It does not mean we've assessed how good they are at the work, or endorsed them. We're trying very hard to keep the badge to one job, so that when you see it you know exactly what you're being told.
You can probably guess. If we marked every account "verified" the second they signed up, two things would happen. The badge would stop being a useful filter — every Welper would have it, so no one would. And the moment someone faked their way through, we'd be shipping a label that misled you instead of helping you. The only thing worse than no verification is verification that lies to you.
Some of this is in the bible we keep for ourselves. The short version: a five-star average from one review is noise, not signal. A verified badge that everyone has is decoration, not data. We'd rather show "No reviews yet" honestly than fake a number we don't have — and we'd rather leave the badge off, visibly, than print a green checkmark nobody earned.
Here's the part most marketplaces would bury: the background check is optional. A Welper who skips it can still build a profile, appear in search, and take bookings. They just don't get the badge.
We went back and forth on this. Requiring it would make for a cleaner story, but it would also price out people who do good work — a one-time fee is a real barrier when you're just starting out — and it would tell you less than you'd think, because a clear record isn't a promise about how someone behaves in your home. So we made it optional, and we made the absence of it visible instead of hiding it.
If a Welper wants the badge: it's a one-time fee (currently $19.99 CAD plus tax), paid in their dashboard. Certn emails them a screening link, results usually land within a few business days, and the badge appears on the profile once the check comes back clear. If it doesn't come back clear, the profile stays active — there's just no badge.
Every Welper card and profile shows the badge in one of two states, and both are on screen:
The grey state is doing real work, so read it carefully. It means only that we do not have a passed result on file. It does not disclose whether a check was never started, is still in progress, or ended without a passed result. If a passed check matters for the job you're booking — someone in your home, around your kids, alone with your pets — you can filter search to show only Welpers who've passed.
A few other things that are real, and that we'd rather point at than dress up as "verification":
A few things aren't solved, and we'd rather say it here than let you find out later:
We'd rather under-promise on this stuff than oversell it.
We could show the badge only when it's earned and show nothing otherwise. Plenty of products do exactly that, and it looks tidier. It also quietly lets you assume the check happened.
So the missing state gets a mark of its own. The badge gets to mean something only if we're willing to show you, plainly, when it isn't there.
— The Welpco team