Skip to content

Popular

↑ ↓ to move · Enter to open Browse all modules

Credential verification

An employer can check the certificate without phoning you

Every credential you issue carries a QR code that resolves to a public verification page. Scan it and the answer comes from your system in seconds — genuine, revoked, or not found.

Live in production, including the public verification endpoint.

Get a quote Book a demo

Trusted by leading skills development providers

Divine Favour Progressive College FETElada InstituteThe Great Oasis CollegeEdzani Community DevelopmentHighbury CollegeCollege of AfricaNTCTshwane City CollegeTshimologo FET CollegeRi A Fhata CivilsVictory Education GroupSt Aquinas CollegeHatfield City CollegeTechniconSAIthemba Elihle InstituteThasululo Technical CollegeLin-Glazed Beauty

Qualification fraud is somebody else’s problem until it is yours

South Africa has a well-documented market in fake qualifications, and the burden of checking falls on employers who have no good way to do it. What they have is your switchboard. Every verification request becomes an email to your office, answered by whoever is available, from a spreadsheet — and the one time nobody answers, a forged certificate goes unchallenged with your name on it.

  • Verification requests arrive by email and are answered manually, or not at all.
  • Nothing distinguishes a certificate you issued from a good colour printer’s work.
  • A revoked or corrected credential stays in circulation looking valid.
  • Nobody can say who authorised a given issuance, or on what basis.
  • Learners who lost a certificate have no way to prove anything.

What credential verification does

Public verification, no login

Each credential has its own public verification URL behind a QR code. The employer checking it needs no account and leaves no trace on your desk.

Tamper-evident ledger

Issuance, correction, reissue and revocation are all recorded in a ledger where a later change cannot quietly rewrite an earlier entry.

Authorised issuance

A credential is issued by a named authority under a policy, not by whoever happened to be logged in. Status is transitioned, never assigned.

Pre-flight before issuing

Eligibility and evidence integrity are checked before a credential can be issued, so the certificate cannot run ahead of the assessment record.

Revocation that actually takes effect

Revoke a credential and its verification page says so immediately. A revoked certificate in someone’s drawer stops verifying.

Corrections and reissue

A misspelt name gets corrected through a recorded process, with the superseded credential retained rather than erased.

How verification works

  1. 1

    Learner completes

    Assessment records and evidence are complete and verified.

  2. 2

    Authority issues

    A named credential authority issues under policy, after eligibility pre-flight passes.

  3. 3

    Credential carries a QR

    The issued document embeds a code that resolves to its own public verification page.

  4. 4

    Anyone can check it

    An employer scans and gets an answer from your system — no account, no call to you.

What this does not do yet

  • Nothing issues until your organisation has been granted its first credential authority. That is deliberate — the module exists so that issuance is authorised rather than assumed — but it is a setup step we walk you through, not something that happens automatically on day one.
  • Verification confirms that a credential was issued by you and what its current status is. It is a check against your register, not an assertion about the learner’s competence beyond what the credential itself records.

Questions providers ask

What does an employer actually see?
They scan the QR code and land on a verification page that confirms whether the credential is genuine and current, what qualification it is for, and who issued it. They do not get a login, a copy of the portfolio, or anything else about the learner.
What happens if we revoke a credential?
The verification page reflects it immediately. This is the part paper cannot do: a printed certificate revoked for fraud keeps looking exactly as valid as it did on the day it was issued, and a verifiable one does not.
Can we correct a certificate without destroying the audit trail?
Yes. Corrections and reissues go through a recorded process and the superseded credential is retained rather than deleted, so the history of what was issued when survives the correction.
Is this a blockchain credential?
No. It is a tamper-evident ledger inside your own system, with public verification. We are not going to sell you a blockchain to solve a problem that a properly governed register and an audit trail solve — and a credential nobody can verify without a wallet is worse for the employer doing the checking.
Does this replace SAQA or NLRD verification?
No. National verification through SAQA and the NLRD is a separate statutory process, and skillSYMS produces the NLRD exports that feed it. This is provider-level verification: proof that your organisation issued this specific credential and that it is still current.
What if a learner loses their certificate?
The credential still exists in the register and still verifies. Learners can access and share their own credentials from the learner portal, so a lost piece of paper is no longer a lost qualification.

Talk to us about this

Tell us about your provider and we will come back with a written quote.

By submitting, you agree to our Privacy Policy. We'll never share your information without consent.

Get a quote built around your provider

Tell us how many learners you carry, how many sites you deliver from, and which modules you need. We come back with a written quote within one business day.

Get a quote Book a demo