Should You Join Trusted Payments?

Someone on site will ask it sooner or later. “Are you on that trusted trader thing?”

Most trades have heard the name. Trusted Payments. A register. An app. Something about staged money and cowboys. Then the news moved on and nobody sat down and explained what it actually is.

Here is the short version. There are two separate things. Neither is a licence to trade. Neither finds you the next job. And joining only makes sense for some books of work, not all of them.

What people are talking about

In late August the register and the app were announced together. Building and ITV News treated them as one story. That is why it feels like one scheme. It is not.

The register is a voluntary approved code for home-improvement businesses. It is being put together with the Furniture and Home Improvement Ombudsman and the Chartered Trading Standards Institute. First firms were due under it around the end of September. It is aimed to be fully live by December 2026. Sign up and you are saying you meet extra rules on how you treat customers and handle complaints. Stay off it and you can still trade. The people who already cut corners will not join.

The app is Trusted Payments. Different product. Same news cycle. It is run by a private company, Trusted Payments Limited, with backing and a CTSI endorsement. It is not a government website. Local press put the launch around 16 September 2026.

The app does not vet anyone by itself. It only works with trades who already sit inside a scheme that checks them. TrustMark is named first. Other partners are listed on the company site. Press copy talked about more than 100,000 trades being able to use it. That is a target, not a membership list you can point at today.

So the question “are you on it?” really means two questions. Are you on a vetting scheme? And will you run this particular job through the app?

How a job works in the app

Think of it as a shared job pack with the money tied to stages.

You and the customer agree the scope, the price and the payment stages before work starts. The customer pays by Open Banking, not card. Each time a stage is signed off, the money is meant to reach you at 18:00 the next day. That pause is deliberate. It gives the customer a chance to stop a payment if something feels off.

A completion slice is taken at the start and held until the job is signed off. Trusted Payments says that hold sits with the Dispute Resolution Ombudsman. One write-up describes it as around 10%. Treat that figure as “described as”, not gospel, until you see it on a live job.

Photos, notes and changes stay in the project. If you fall out, the first stop is still you. Reporting around the launch said both sides then have about 45 days in the app before it goes to the ombudsman. Skip a binding decision and you can be banned from the app.

Warranty is the bit headlines flatten. The company site is more precise than “two years for everything”. Three months while the job is underway. After completion, 12 months on jobs up to £2,500 and 24 months on larger ones, capped at £20,000. TrustMark jobs are described as 24 months after completion whatever the value.

One myth to drop. This is not a giant official piggy bank. TrustMark’s own FAQ says Trusted Payments is not a bank, is not FCA-authorised, and does not hold the customer’s money. Payments go through an FCA-authorised provider. TrustMark names Stripe. The warranty sits with a separate insurer.

If part of the job is paid in cash outside the app, check the live terms before you tell the customer that slice is warranted. Do not guess.

Same-day and emergency work is a bad fit. A customer with no heating does not want a 24-hour hold. A planned bathroom can live with it.

What it costs

“Free for the trade” is the line on the tin. The catch sits one step earlier.

If you are not already on TrustMark or another scheme the app accepts, that membership is the real ticket price. The app join fee is the easy bit.

On the job itself the published numbers do not agree with each other. That is worth saying out loud.

TrustMark’s FAQ puts a project fee at £35, passed to the customer, with a lower fee under £2,000, and also lists £25 for jobs under £2,500. Transaction fees are up to £4 per payment, on the homeowner side. Other write-ups have used £45 to £85. TrustMark’s consumer page also says the homeowner should not be paying project fees, transaction fees, ombudsman fees or warranty costs. Those two pages are on the same site.

So the only safe move is to price a real job in the app and see what it shows. Do not print a fee from a news story onto a quote.

Xero and QuickBooks hooks were described as coming from October 2026, not already sitting there waiting. Not a reason to rush.

Join, wait, or just have an answer ready

Join if you already hold TrustMark or another accepted scheme, the jobs you would put through it are planned and photographed, and customers in your area have started asking. The paper trail and the ombudsman route are the useful parts. The next-day payout is the cost of that.

Wait if you are not on a scheme and do not want another membership this year. Wait if most of the book is call-outs. Wait if a held completion slice would pinch the cashflow. Wait if you already work off a written contract and staged bank transfers and nobody has asked yet.

Rico Wojtulewicz at the National Federation of Builders told The Guardian that many busy, decent firms may simply not join, and would rather see a digital building passport that follows the property. That is a fair view from the trade side. It does not make the app a con. It also does not make it compulsory.

Citizens Advice figures in that same piece put 4.8 million homeowners with a problem on a home repair in an 18-month stretch. The firms behind those jobs will not be first in the queue. A voluntary badge does not take them off the road.

It is not a lead site either. If the phone is quiet, this app will not fix that. A simple site, a Google listing and a professional email still do more for inbound work. That path is set out in how tradesmen can ease off the paid directories.

If you try one job

Confirm the scheme you are on is accepted today. TrustMark is the named first gate. Open the app and read the fee and warranty screens for a job the size you actually quote. Put the project fee in the price so it does not come out of your margin by accident. Run one quiet job all the way through before you promise it on a bigger site. Keep the usual written contract and bank details for work that does not fit.

When the customer goes home and types the company name, they still need a page that looks like a real business. Services, a few sharp photos, a contact form, an email that matches the name on the van. That is the bit that belongs to you. Have a look at the Examples. If you want one built without the technical headache, Get in Touch.

On the doorstep, keep it ordinary:

“I’m on [scheme]. We can run the job through Trusted Payments so your money is staged and the work is warranted, or we can use my usual written contract and bank transfers. Same price either way once the project fee is in.”