Credential verification
Credential verification that takes seconds instead of weeks
Verifying a qualification usually means finding the right person at the issuing institution, sending an email, and waiting. Most employers skip it. Credentials issued through Certifications.ng are checked by anyone, instantly, without contacting you at all.
The verification gap
Almost every certificate in circulation is unverifiable in practice, in the sense that it is not a verifiable credential and carries no proof of its own. The document says a person completed a programme. Confirming that requires the issuer to be reachable, willing, still operating, and able to find a record from several years ago. Each of those can fail on its own, and together they make verification expensive enough that it usually just does not happen.
The cost of that gap falls in two places. Employers hire against claims they cannot check. And every honest graduate is quietly devalued, because a credential nobody verifies is a credential nobody fully believes. Certificate fraud in Nigeria follows that cost through to the institutions whose names end up on documents they never issued.
Worth separating from two questions it is often confused with, since they have different answers: credential verification asks whether a credential is real, not whether the holder is who they say they are, and not whether the issuing body is one anybody should respect.
Closing the gap does not require employers to adopt anything, which is the only reason it is achievable. It requires the credential itself to carry proof, moving the burden off the verifier chasing the issuer and onto the document, which can answer for itself.
How a credential is verified
Four steps, all of which happen in the few hundred milliseconds between opening the link and reading the result.
1. The credential is opened
Through a shared link, a QR code scan from a printed certificate, or a credential ID on a CV.
2. The signed record is rebuilt
The recipient's name, email, award, issuing organisation, issue date, and credential ID are assembled into the exact canonical form that was signed at issuance.
3. The signature is checked in the browser
The visitor's own browser verifies the Ed25519 signature against the issuer's public key. The check runs on the verifier's device, not on a server that could simply claim it passed.
4. The result is shown plainly
Who was awarded what, by whom, when, and whether the signature matches. A failed check is shown as a failure rather than buried.
The signature check runs client-side deliberately. A verification page that simply displays a green tick is asking the visitor to trust the platform; one that performs the cryptographic check in the visitor's own browser is asking them to trust mathematics they could reproduce themselves. The full mechanism is documented on the security page.
It also runs whether or not anyone asks for it. Across one issuer's cohort, 133 signature checks ran and none failed, while only 10 visits opened the verification panel to look, so most recipients are covered by a check they never consciously requested. The full numbers from that cohort include the less flattering ones.
What verification is worth to each side
- For issuers
- Verification requests stop arriving as emails your team has to answer one at a time, and your credentials stop being forgeable by anyone with a copy of the template.
- For employers
- A qualification claim can be confirmed during the shortlisting call rather than deferred to a background check that never gets run. How employers verify certificates compares this with the four other routes.
- For recipients
- A link that proves itself, rather than a PDF attachment that asks a stranger to take their word for it.
Frequently asked questions
- Does the person verifying need an account?
- No. Verification is public and anonymous. An employer opens the credential link or scans the QR code and sees the result immediately, with no login, no app, and no request to your organisation.
- What exactly does a successful verification prove?
- That the credential details shown, meaning recipient, award, issuing organisation, and issue date, are exactly the details the issuer signed, and that they were signed with that issuer's key. It proves the record is authentic and unaltered. On its own it does not prove that the person who sent you the link is the person named on it.
- Can a credential be verified after the issuer stops using the platform?
- The verification page and the signature stay valid, because verification is a mathematical check against a public key rather than a lookup against a live subscription. That is the practical difference between a verifiable credential and a database entry sitting behind a vendor's login.
- How do we verify credentials our organisation did not issue?
- If the credential was issued through Certifications.ng, its link or QR code verifies the same way whichever organisation issued it. If it was not, you are back to contacting the issuing body directly. That situation is what this product exists to remove, and it is the reason issuers adopt it.
- Can a recipient edit their own credential page?
- No. Recipients can share and download their credential, but nothing on the page is editable by them. Corrections are made by the issuing organisation, and re-issuing keeps the same verification URL so previously shared links keep working.
Make your credentials verifiable
We will show you the verification flow on a credential from your own organisation, exactly as an employer would see it.