What do you need?
Start in your own words
A customer describes the service, place, timing and budget that matter to them.
- “I need my hair braided this Saturday. Home visit, Manchester. Max £100.”
What makes Sowo different
Independent providers already have reputations.
They are simply scattered across systems that do not share the evidence behind them.
The problem
A hair stylist with eight years of work has proof of it in five places at once: photos on Instagram, recommendations in a WhatsApp group, a listing on a directory, payments through a card reader, and messages agreeing dates and prices. None of those systems know about each other. The directory cannot see the payment. The payment cannot see the review.
So a provider rebuilds their credibility from scratch on every surface they appear on, and a customer is asked to trust claims that no system checked.
Commerce → trust → intelligence
From a request to real results
SOWO’s direction as Trust Passport evidence grows
SOWO is developing an intelligence layer that connects what a customer needs with evidence generated through real marketplace activity. The model can help interpret language, while SOWO controls what information is true, permitted and actionable.
- Live
- Live
SOWO AI
Understand the request
SOWO can interpret supported details, ask useful missing questions and prepare a brief for the customer to review.
- Service: braiding
- Timing: Saturday
- Area: Manchester
- Visit: home visit
- Budget: up to £100
- Live foundation · developing capability
SOWO marketplace data
Use recorded information
The platform records information that can support discovery and future matching without making the model the source of truth.
- Services
- Prices
- Locations
- Completed work
- Eligible reviews
- Repeat customers
- Identity-check status
- Live
Trust Passport
Bring trust evidence together
A Trust Passport provides structured evidence based on recorded SOWO activity. It does not guarantee that a person is trustworthy.
- Identity-check status
- Completed paid work
- Transaction-backed reviews
- Repeat-customer relationships
- Eligible vouches
- In development
SOWO intelligence
Understand, find, compare and explain
As capabilities develop, permitted marketplace and Trust Passport evidence can help people identify suitable options and understand why they may fit.
- Find suitable providers
- Compare relevant evidence
- Explain possible fit
- Request availability or a quote
- Coordinate the next step
- In development
User approval
You stay in control
Customers review the result. Consequential actions such as confirming a booking or payment require appropriate user approval.
- Live foundation · developing capability
Booking and payment
Use the existing marketplace flow
Bookings and payments use SOWO’s existing transaction infrastructure. SOWO AI does not control Stripe or move money.
- Live
Work completed
Complete the normal transaction journey
The provider delivers the agreed service and the booking progresses through SOWO’s established completion flow.
- Live
New transaction-backed evidence
Feed eligible activity back
Completed activity can add relevant evidence when SOWO’s rules are satisfied. It does not train the underlying language model.
- Completed job recorded
- Eligible review recorded
- Repeat relationship recognised
- Trust Passport updated where applicable
Development direction: marketplace transactions, Trust Passports, assisted request preparation and the first evidence-grounded provider guidance are live. Trust-aware matching, provider comparison and coordinated availability, quotes and bookings are being introduced progressively. User approval remains required before consequential actions.
The design difference
Sowo records the commerce event and the trust signal in the same place, on the same record.
A booking or order is paid for and completed on Sowo. The review that follows is attached to that transaction. A customer may become eligible to vouch when their repeat booking, released-payment and rating history satisfies Sowo’s rules.
Providers control how they present their business, but they cannot assign themselves the trust signals recorded behind it. Those signals accumulate through eligible activity on Sowo.
Sowo does not merely display reputation claims. It derives trust signals from eligible activity recorded within the platform.
Integrity by construction
Eligibility rules are enforced at the database layer rather than relying solely on application code. A review without a completed, paid booking or order is rejected. A vouch is rejected unless the customer has completed at least two bookings with that provider with payment released, and left a rating of three or higher. Providers cannot vouch for themselves, and cannot write to their own trust fields.
Database enforcement means ordinary application and administrative workflows cannot bypass these eligibility rules accidentally or selectively. Privileged database changes remain technically possible, but they sit outside the normal product workflow. This is evidence of implementation, not a barrier to entry: another competent team can write the same constraints.
It raises the cost and traceability of manipulation rather than removing it. Manufacturing a reputation would mean manufacturing the transactions underneath it, at real expense, through Stripe, leaving a traceable record. That is a different proposition from writing a review, but it is not impossible and this page does not claim it is.
What compounds
The code can be reproduced. The history cannot.
A competitor can implement transaction-gated reviews tomorrow. What they cannot instantly produce is a provider with a sustained history of paid work, reviews from the customers who paid, and customers who returned.
A conventional directory can introduce transaction-backed reviews, but it cannot retrospectively turn historical reviews into transaction evidence. It must distinguish legacy reputation from activity verified under the new model.
As that history grows, it can also provide richer permitted context for SOWO’s intelligence layer. The underlying AI model does not become SOWO’s proprietary evidence. The value comes from the structured marketplace information SOWO can safely make available, subject to the permissions and safeguards governing its use.
Sowo’s distinction is not that individual features cannot be copied. It is that bookings, orders, payments and reputation are designed as one connected system. As genuine activity accumulates, the resulting provider history becomes progressively harder to reproduce without completing the underlying transactions.
Built today
- Team review of every provider before their profile appears
- Optional identity checks, with successful verification shown by the verified seal
- Service bookings, with payment authorised at checkout and taken on completion
- Deposits taken at checkout for work booked further ahead
- Automatic payment capture after five days when a provider has marked the work complete and the customer has not responded
- Product sales alongside services, from the same provider record, with stock quantities
- Reviews restricted to completed, paid bookings or orders
- Review score and originating transaction fixed once left
- Vouch eligibility rules enforced in the database
- A cumulative Trust Passport whose trust fields providers cannot write themselves
- Discovery ordered by trust signals by default
- Customer requests, answered by providers
- Logged moderation, re-review on profile edits, and reporting
- Apps on iOS and Android
Developing next
- Broader evidence-grounded SOWO Assistant capabilities
- Trust-aware service discovery and provider comparison
- Coordinated availability, requests and quotes, with user approval before consequential actions
- Permissioned assistance through more of the booking journey
- Live courier shipping rates for product orders, which currently use a fixed rate
- Sowo Day, an event-planning layer, in development
The SOWO Assistant builds on this architecture as an intelligence layer, helping customers and providers understand and use relevant platform information while the underlying trust evidence remains grounded in recorded Sowo activity.
Current boundary: Trust Passport records currently operate within Sowo and cannot yet be exported for use outside the platform.
For the mechanisms themselves, see how Sowo works.