How Ghana’s TrustCheck helps shoppers vet online sellers before they pay

Ghanaian startup TrustCheck has built a review and trust platform that allows consumers to check out businesses, especially social media sellers, before they part with their money.

Launched in January of this year by Elliot Brenya, Tema-based TrustCheck lets users look up a business, read verified customer reviews, and see a trust score out of 100. The score combines a business’s rating, review volume, how responsive it is to customers, verification status and any open disputes.

“A lot of buying in Ghana now happens on Instagram, TikTok, X and WhatsApp. You see a product, message the seller, send money by Mobile Money and hope it arrives,” Brenya told Disrupt Africa. “Most of the time it does, but when it doesn’t, there is usually no way to get your money back and no record that warns the next person. TrustCheck is meant to be that record.”

Brenya was inspired to build the platform after being scammed while buying a mobile device, having relied on fake ratings for the vendor.

All reviews on TrustCheck are moderated before going live, and reviewers can attach proof of purchase, such as MoMo receipts or order chats, which only moderators can see. Businesses cannot pay to have reviews removed, but can claim their pages for free, respond to reviews and apply for verification. This month the startup also launched a scam check for phone numbers, MoMo numbers, social media handles and websites, as well as a public API that returns a business’s trust score.

“There are global review sites, but they were built around formal businesses with websites and card payments. The sellers people in Ghana worry about most are an Instagram page, a TikTok shop or a WhatsApp number,” Brenya said. “Nothing gives you one searchable place, built for how people here actually buy and pay, that you can check in a minute before sending money.”

The platform is free for shoppers, and makes money by charging businesses for verification and premium tools. It also runs display advertising. Bootstrapped so far, TrustCheck has around 300 registered reviewers and over 50 businesses listed, 20 of which have signed up to manage their pages. It has secured its first paying business customers, though Brenya said revenue remains small.

“Encouraging on the consumer side and slower on the business side, which is what we expected,” he said. “A page they don’t control, with reviews they can’t delete, feels like a risk at first. The ones who have engaged see it the other way round: a page with real reviews and replies is the best proof a small online seller can show a new customer.”

TrustCheck is focused on Ghana for now, but sees West Africa as the obvious next step.

“The problem is the same in Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Kenya and anywhere else where social commerce and mobile money have grown faster than ways to check who you are paying,” Brenya said.

The post How Ghana’s TrustCheck helps shoppers vet online sellers before they pay appeared first on Disrupt Africa.