For businesses
Trust badge for a website: which ones a customer can check
A trust badge for a website only works if the customer can click it and verify something they could not verify from your own copy. Security seals prove the page is encrypted, review badges show self-selected opinions, scheme logos prove competence only when a registration number is shown, and a register-linked badge opens the company’s live public record. Most badges are decoration; the checkable ones are evidence.
Key facts
- Displaying a trust mark, quality mark or equivalent without authorisation is a banned commercial practice; so is claiming a scheme membership or approval you do not hold (Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Sch. 20, paras 2–4).
- Scheme registrations — Gas Safe, FENSA, NICEIC, TrustMark, MCS — are verifiable only through the scheme’s own register and only by number or registered name; the logo alone proves nothing.
- Review badges show ratings the platform hosts; none of Google, Trustpilot or Checkatrade verifies the legal entity, its accounts or its directors.
- The SafeToPay verified business badge links to the company’s full public report — legal entity, age, accounts, directors, website compared with the register — refreshed on every re-check. It is free, carries no verdict colour, and is revoked if the record changes to red (SafeToPay business rules).
- A badge is worth exactly what the customer finds when they click it.
What a trust badge actually proves
A trust badge proves whatever the issuer checked before granting it, and nothing more. A padlock icon proves the connection is encrypted; it says nothing about who is on the other end of it. A “5-star rated” graphic proves people posted five stars somewhere. A Gas Safe logo, with a registration number a customer can look up, proves an engineer is registered to work on gas. Customers have learned this, and the careful ones now click before they believe.
That makes the useful question, for a business choosing what to put in its footer, not “which badge looks most reassuring” but “which badge leads somewhere a customer can verify”. The table below sorts the common ones on that basis.
Five kinds of badge, compared
Badges divide by what the customer finds when they click, and only two of the five kinds lead to something independent of the business.
| Badge type | Examples | What it verifies | Issued by | Clicks through to | Can be faked? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Payment logos | Visa, Mastercard, PayPal images | Nothing; the images are free to copy | Nobody | Nothing | Trivially |
| Security seals | SSL/”secure site” seals, malware-scan seals | The site has a certificate or passed a scan | Certificate or security vendor | A certificate page about the domain | Easily, by copying the image |
| Review badges | Google rating widget, Trustpilot, Checkatrade, Yell | Ratings hosted by the platform; opinions of the work | Review platform | The profile — often with a live count | Ratings can be bought; the widget itself is usually genuine |
| Scheme logos | Gas Safe, FENSA, NICEIC, TrustMark, MCS, FMB | Competence or membership — only if the number is shown | The scheme | Usually nothing; the customer must search the register themselves | Yes, and it happens; a banned practice since 2025 |
| Register-linked badge | SafeToPay verified business | Legal entity, status, age, accounts, directors, website vs register | Read from public registers; verified by email from the company’s domain | The company’s live public report | The image can be copied; the link cannot — it opens the real record for whichever company it belongs to |
Security seals reassure about the page, not the business
An encrypted connection is a minimum, not a merit — every site has one since browsers started flagging the ones that don’t. A seal that says the connection is secure tells a customer that their card number won’t be intercepted on the way to a company they still know nothing about. Keep the certificate; the seal graphic adds nothing a customer can check.
Review badges describe the work and only the work
A Google rating widget with a live count is genuinely useful: it links to a profile the customer can read, at an address they can map. What it cannot do is say anything about the money. A firm can have 200 five-star reviews and net liabilities; a check shows both and keeps them apart. Customers reading how review sites compare with the register are told exactly that.
Scheme logos are proof only with a number
The scheme registers are excellent — and the logo without a number is just an image, which is why consumer guides now say to verify the badge on the scheme’s register rather than trust the footer. Put the registration number and the registered name next to every logo you display. Displaying one you are not entitled to has been a banned practice in its own right since the 2024 Act took effect.
A register-linked badge opens the record itself
The difference is where the click lands. Rather than a page the business wrote or a profile the business curates, it opens a report assembled from Companies House, HMRC, the Gazette, domain records and Google — the same report a suspicious customer would have gone and built for themselves, with the website’s own claims set next to the register line by line. The business does not control the content, which is precisely why the customer can rely on it.
What no badge can do
No badge, ours included, can tell a customer that you are good at the job, that you will still be trading next year, or that a deposit is safe; a badge can only make the evidence easy to reach.
- It does not replace the record. If the accounts are overdue or a strike-off notice has been published, a badge makes that easier to find, not harder. Fix the record first.
- It does not rank you. The SafeToPay badge shows no score and no colour on the site itself. What the customer sees on clicking is the report as it stands.
- It does not vouch for the work. Reviews, references and scheme registration do that.
- It cannot be bought. A badge that costs money to display is a marketing product; a badge that is free and can be withdrawn is closer to a reference.
Two real checks
Both from live checks; names withheld, figures as filed on the register.
Bespoke staircase manufacturer, ten years on the register
Footer carries the registered name and number, the workshop address and the register-linked badge. A customer clicking it lands on the full report: active company, accounts on time, two directors with no dissolved companies, VAT number matching HMRC, Google Business Profile at the workshop postcode, one soft note about a SIC code. The badge did not make the record green; it saved the customer twenty minutes of finding out.
Building services company with TrustMark and NICEIC logos in the footer
Neither logo carried a registration number. The register showed a First Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off, accounts overdue, £16 in cash on the last filing. A customer who trusted the logos would have paid; a customer who clicked them found nothing to click; a customer who ran a check saw the notice in the first line. Logos without numbers are not a weak signal — for a firm in this state they are the opposite of one.
Enter a website address, e.g. smithkitchens.co.uk
How to add a register-linked badge
The whole process is one check, one email and one paste; there is no form to fill in and nothing to pay.
- Run the free check on your own website above. Read the report as a customer would and fix anything the record gets wrong at source — Companies House, your footer, your Google profile.
- Request the badge from the businesses page with an email address on your company’s domain. That email is the verification: it shows the person asking controls the site the report is about.
- Receive the snippet — a few lines of HTML with the badge image and a link to your report on safetopay.co.uk. Four styles: standard or compact, light or dark.
- Paste it into the footer next to your company number, or on the quote page. It scales to the width you give it.
- Leave it. The link always opens the latest re-check of your company, so there is nothing to update when the record changes.
The rules behind ours
A badge is only as credible as the rules it can be lost under, so these are ours in full.
- Free, for every business, always. There is no paid tier for the badge and no paid way to change what the report says.
- No verdict colour on your site. The badge is the same for every verified business; the report behind it is not.
- The report is the public record. A business can request a correction if a fact is wrong at source, and can add a short response that appears in the report. It cannot remove a fact, a date or a filing.
- Revoked on red. If a re-check returns a red verdict — a strike-off notice, overdue accounts, a disqualified director — the badge link is withdrawn until the record is clear again.
- Everything we read, and where from, is listed on the business data page and in the methodology.
What a customer reads once the badge opens the report is covered in what customers see on Companies House; the ten-minute setup that makes the record worth linking to is in how to prove your business is legitimate.
Enter a website address, e.g. smithkitchens.co.uk
Frequently asked questions
Do trust badges actually increase conversions?
Only the ones a customer can verify. A badge that links to an independent record — a scheme register, a live review profile, a public company report — gives a hesitant customer somewhere to go instead of leaving. Decorative seals with no click-through do little, and copied logos without numbers can do harm if the customer checks.
Is it illegal to put a Gas Safe or TrustMark logo on my site if I’m not registered?
Yes. Displaying a trust mark or quality mark without authorisation, or claiming an approval you do not have, is a banned commercial practice under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, enforceable by the CMA and Trading Standards. The same applies to letting a registration lapse and leaving the logo up.
How much does the SafeToPay badge cost?
Nothing, and there is no paid version. Businesses never pay SafeToPay; customers pay for full reports. Keeping the badge free is what allows it to be withdrawn when a record goes red without a commercial conflict.
Can someone copy my badge onto their site?
They can copy the image, but the link opens the report for the company the badge was issued to, with that company’s legal name, number and website in the first line. A copied badge on a different domain points at the wrong company, which is visible immediately.
What happens to the badge if my report changes?
The link always opens your latest re-check, so amber and green changes show automatically and nothing on your site needs editing. If a re-check returns red, the badge link is withdrawn and you are emailed the reason; it is restored when the record is clear again.
Does the badge show my score or a colour?
No. The badge on your website is the same for every verified business. The Record strength score and the verdict appear only in the report a customer opens by clicking it.
Sources
- Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Schedule 20 — commercial practices which are in all circumstances considered unfair — legislation.gov.uk
- Gas Safe Register · FENSA · TrustMark · NICEIC · MCS
- Companies House — Find and update company information
- SafeToPay — what we read about your business and where from
- SafeToPay methodology v1.2