For Agents

How Agent Verification Works — And Why It Has Tiers

18 June 2026 · 5 min read · Seruya Trust & Safety

ID and a liveness check are the floor, not the ceiling. What each verification tier adds, and how a public track record changes agent behaviour.

Anyone can call themselves a property agent in Kenya, and that single fact explains most of what is wrong with the market. Seruya’s answer is not a single pass-or-fail gate but a tiered one, because the check appropriate for someone letting a one-bedroom is not the check appropriate for someone handling a land sale.

The base tier — required before marketing anything

• National ID, validated against the name on the account.
• KRA PIN.
• A selfie and liveness check, so the ID belongs to the person using it.
• A linked bank account and platform wallet, so payouts have a destination.

Higher tiers

Business registration, an estate agency licence, physical office verification and background checks unlock higher-value mandates. Owners can require a tier when they list, which means the verification level is not a vanity badge — it determines what work an agent can be matched to.

The part that actually changes behaviour

Verification proves who someone is. A public track record proves what they do. Every agent profile carries coverage areas, property-type specialisation, languages, completed deals, success rate, customer rating, active listings and average response time — and matching uses all of it.

Reputation only disciplines a market when it is portable, public, and attached to money.

Because agent payouts release in stages — booking accepted, viewing completed, offer submitted, deal closed — an agent who does not show up loses the majority of what the job was worth, and the missed attendance is visible on their profile afterwards. That combination is what makes the marketplace self-policing rather than dependent on us to police it.