FAQ
Frequently asked questions.
What is trustRate?
trustRate is a platform where businesses and individuals give each other goods, money, or services on credit, and both sides confirm how repayment actually went. That confirmed history builds a trustRate rating — a 0 to 1000 number showing how reliably someone has paid in the past.
Is trustRate a loan app or a lender?
No. trustRate never lends money itself and is never a party to any agreement you make with another user. It only records the agreement both of you already made with each other, and builds a rating from how it actually plays out.
Is a trustRate rating the same as a CIBIL score?
No — they measure different things. CIBIL reflects how someone repays formal bank loans and credit cards. trustRate reflects how someone repays informal trade credit between real buyers and sellers, which CIBIL has no visibility into at all. See our full comparison for the detail.
How is the trustRate rating calculated?
It's built entirely from your own real, confirmed transaction history on the platform — how you've actually repaid, how long you've been active, and how you've used credit over time. It's recalculated fresh from that real history every time it's checked, so nothing is permanently baked in from a single bad month. The exact formula is proprietary and isn't published.
Does accepting an agreement need an OTP?
No. Accepting or declining a credit agreement happens from your own dashboard with no OTP involved — OTP is reserved only for identity verification (KYC), never for confirming you agree to a deal.
Why does trustRate need my Aadhaar and PAN?
To confirm you're a real, verifiable person before you can create or accept agreements — this closes the loophole of escaping a poor repayment record by simply signing up again under a different number. Your raw Aadhaar number is never stored, anywhere — only a one-way cryptographic hash used to detect that exact situation, and a masked reference for your PAN.
What happens if I pay late?
The agreement moves to overdue, and it pulls your trustRate rating down through the on-time payment factor — the longer it stays unpaid relative to the agreed term, the larger the effect. Paying it off afterward is recorded too, but a late settlement is never treated identically to an on-time one.
What if I think a dispute was recorded unfairly?
Every credit agreement has a dispute option that pauses the due-date clock for as long as the dispute stays genuinely open, and resolving it assigns fault based on what both sides actually said — not automatically to whoever raised it.
Is trustRate free to use?
Creating an account, accepting agreements, and building your trustRate rating is free. A small commission applies only when a seller successfully settles a credit agreement through the platform — there's no cost to a buyer at all.
What are badges and frames?
A badge is a verified credential a brand issues to a person — for example, 'Distributor of [Brand]' — answering what their relationship to that brand actually is. A frame is a locked, tamper-evident document, like an offer letter or salary slip, issued by a verified brand and provably unchanged since both sides accepted it.
Is my trustRate profile public?
Your rating and repayment summary are visible to people you actually transact with, or who look you up before extending you credit — that visibility is the entire point, the same way a reference only works if the person checking it can read it. You can choose to hide specific badges or documents from third parties at any time.
Does trustRate work on mobile?
Yes — trustRate has a full native Android app alongside the web app, with the same agreements, ratings, badges, and KYC flow on both.
Who is trustRate built for?
Manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors giving goods on credit; individuals giving money informally to people they know; and freelancers or service providers who deliver work before getting paid. All of these share the same underlying problem — no shared way to check whether someone pays before extending them credit.