TL;DR: Digital credentials are certificates, diplomas, licences, badges and memberships issued online, where anyone can check who issued them and that nothing has been changed. A training provider with one certificate type can go live in about two weeks: decide what to issue, design the template, connect the data and run a pilot. TRUE Original is digital credential software and service in one, with a dashboard, a REST API and LMS and CRM integrations, every document on the issuer's own domain and verifiable in TRUE Verify.
Digital credentials are online records of a qualification, an achievement or a membership, issued by an organisation to a named person, that anyone can open and check. A digital credential states who issued it, who holds it, what it certifies and when. What separates a digital credential from a scanned certificate is the check: the reader can confirm the issuer and see that nobody has altered the content.
The strictest definition comes from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Its Verifiable Credentials Data Model v2.0 defines a verifiable credential as "a tamper-evident credential whose authorship can be cryptographically verified." W3C published version 2.0 as a Recommendation on 15 May 2025. The same specification calls a credential "a set of one or more claims made by the same entity", and a claim is a plain statement: this person completed this course on this date.
Digital credentialing is the work around the document. Someone designs it, issues it to the right person and delivers it. Then someone answers the question every employer asks, which is whether it is real. The standard itself is covered in our guide to W3C Verifiable Credentials 2.0.
Digital credentials work through three roles that the W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model names issuer, holder and verifier: the issuer makes a claim about a person, the holder keeps and shares it, and the verifier checks it. With TRUE Original the issuer is the organisation that issues from the TRUE dashboard, the API or an integration, the holder is the recipient who receives a link, and the verifier is anyone who opens the document or checks it in TRUE Verify.
The W3C specification defines a verifier as "A role an entity performs by receiving one or more verifiable credentials, optionally inside a verifiable presentation for processing", and gives employers as its first example. In practice the three steps look like this:
Common examples of digital credentials are course certificates, diplomas, professional licences, organisational certifications, digital badges and membership cards. According to Credential Engine's Counting Credentials 2025 report, published on 9 December 2025, the United States alone has 1,850,034 unique credentials offered by more than 134,000 providers. Badges (1,022,028), certificates (486,352) and degrees (264,099) are the largest groups in that count.
Digital badges usually follow Open Badges, the standard maintained by 1EdTech. According to 1EdTech, each Open Badges credential "is digitally signed by its issuing organization as Verifiable Credentials compatible with the Verifiable Credentials Data Model 2.0". A micro-credential and a digital credential answer different questions: the micro-credential is the achievement, a short assessed unit of learning, and the digital credential is the record that carries it. TRUE Original issues that record as a TRUE Original document, whatever the achievement inside it.
A PDF certificate is a file, and a file says nothing about where it came from. A TRUE Original document is a page on the issuer's own domain, anchored on a public blockchain, that anyone can check in seconds in TRUE Verify without an account. The holder shares a link instead of an attachment.
That link changes who does the work. An employer who receives a PDF has to email or phone the issuer to confirm it. An employer who receives a TRUE Original document opens it. The issuer also sees when the document is opened and shared, which a PDF in someone's inbox never reports.
Digital credential software designs, issues, delivers and verifies digital credentials, and keeps a record of every document issued. TRUE Original is digital credential software for organisations that issue certificates, diplomas, licences and memberships: the issuer designs a template in its own brand, adds recipients in the dashboard or through an integration, and each recipient receives a link to a document on the issuer's own domain.
These are the parts of TRUE Original that an implementation uses:
Digital credential software also manages what happens after issue. Every credential in TRUE Original can carry an optional expiration date, and TRUE sends renewal notifications to credential holders at intervals the issuer defines. When a credential is revoked, verification results show it as revoked from that moment. The full lifecycle is in the guide to digital credential lifecycle management.
A digital credential service provider runs the credential platform for the issuer and helps with design, setup and integrations, so the issuing organisation does not build or host anything itself. TRUE Original is both the software and the service: the platform, documents designed in the issuer's own brand (animated if the issuer wants), connections to the systems already in use, and support and guides for the rare case that needs a human hand.
Active Sweden (Friskvårdsföretagen)
Challenge: Certifying wellness companies at scale with API automation
Implementation:
Result: Fully automated certification workflow, no manual issuing required, instant credential delivery
Helena Arnold, Head of the Competence Council at Almega Friskvårdsföretagen, described the day to day: "I like that the automation works so well. It is extremely rare that we need to step in with manual handling, and if it does happen it is very easy to sort things out with the guides or with the quick and friendly support."
TRUE Original has issued more than 900,000 documents for more than 200 issuers, with customers in more than 15 countries.
For a training provider, a digital credential is issued when a participant completes a course, arrives as a link in the participant's inbox, and can be shared on LinkedIn and verified by any employer. With TRUE Original, a course completion in Canvas, Moodle or Learnster can issue the certificate automatically on the provider's own domain, without anyone exporting a list.
YH Akademin runs vocational programmes from frontend development to digital marketing and sales. Its education managers used to create and distribute every diploma, for every graduate, every term. YH Akademin brought in TRUE Original to automate both the creation and the distribution of its certificates. The work left the education managers entirely.
Implementation:
Result: Simplified graduation process, students sharing diplomas on LinkedIn, reduced administrative burden
Ali Feizabadi, head of IT development at YH Akademin, put it in one line: "I really like the efficiency of TRUE, it frees our staff from tedious work."
Every view of a certificate is a visit to the training provider's own domain. A participant who shares a course certificate carries the provider's name to a network the provider has never reached, which is why training providers switch from PDF to verifiable certificates. More for course providers at TRUE for education and training.
Implementing digital credentials takes six steps: plan what to issue, choose the software, set up templates and integration, pilot with 20 to 100 recipients, launch, then automate. A small training provider with one certificate type can be live in about two weeks with TRUE Original. An organisation that needs API integration and a compliance review should plan for eight to twelve weeks.
Start with the credentials, not the software. List what you issue today: course certificates, professional certifications, diplomas, memberships, awards, licence renewals. Then count them. Hundreds a year can be issued from the dashboard. Thousands call for automation, and tens of thousands for an API or LMS integration.
Write down how the current process works, step by step: where recipient data comes from, who creates the document, which tools are used, how it is delivered, how long it takes, which errors recur and how verification requests are answered today. The audit shows where digital credentials save the most time and where integration matters most.
Bring in the people affected early. That means whoever holds the budget, the staff who will issue every day, IT for integration and security, communications for branding and recipient messages, and legal or compliance for data handling. Then set success criteria you can measure later: time to issue, cost per credential, verification response time and error rate, each compared with today.
Choose digital credential software against the requirements from step 1. Four questions sort most options. Can anyone verify a credential without creating an account? Does the credential live on your own domain? Does the software connect to the systems where completions already happen? Who helps you during setup?
TRUE Original answers each one with a yes. TRUE Verify is free and needs no account, every document is published on the issuer's domain, more than twenty integrations cover learning platforms and CRM systems, and support and guides come with the platform. Also check how forgery and tampering are prevented, where data is stored, what GDPR and other compliance rules require of you, and what the recipient sees.
Ask for a demo built on your own case: show our graduation process, walk through issuing from our LMS, show what an employer sees when checking a certificate. Bring the staff who will issue every day. They spot practical problems first.
Set up the account, user roles and your own domain, so that credentials sit on your domain rather than the platform's. Design one template per credential type with your logo, colours and fonts, the fields each document shows, and a QR code or link for verification. Keep the design review small: two or three decision makers and a deadline.
Then choose how documents get issued. The right choice depends on volume and on the technical resources you have:
Most organisations start in the dashboard and move to automation as volume grows. Prepare the messages at the same time: a short brief for staff, the delivery email and an FAQ for recipients, and a page on your website telling employers how to verify your credentials.
Issue to a pilot group of 20 to 100 recipients before the full launch: one programme's graduates, one training session or one region. That is large enough to reveal problems and small enough to fix them. Prepare the data, generate the credentials, review them before sending, send, and watch delivery and opens.
Ask recipients whether the credential was easy to open and share, and whether it looks professional. Ask staff what took longer than expected. If you can, ask an employer to verify one. Most pilots end in small changes: wording on the template, a clearer delivery email, an extra data check.
Go live when templates are approved, the integration is tested, staff are trained, recipient messages are ready, verification information is published and leadership has signed off. A phased launch, one programme or region at a time, carries lower risk. Launching everywhere at once is faster and needs more confidence in the setup. In the first weeks, follow delivery rates, open rates, support questions and verification activity, and fix problems while they are small.
Once the manual flow works, connect the LMS, CRM or API so that a completion issues the credential by itself. Then add more programmes, new credential types such as micro-credentials, past graduates and partner organisations.
Here is an advantage that often gets overlooked: because TRUE credentials can live on your domain, Google indexes them as pages on your website.
Every certificate you issue creates a new indexed page with internal links back to your main site, building your domain authority and improving your overall search ranking. A training provider that issues 500 certificates has 500 pages on its own domain, each one shared by a participant with people who may never have heard of the provider. Issue 5,000 and you have 5,000.
Platforms that host credentials on their own domain (the industry default) capture all of this SEO value for themselves. TRUE is the opposite: the SEO benefit flows entirely to you.
Measure the result against the criteria from step 1: time to issue, cost per credential, verification time, recipient feedback and the reach of shared credentials. TRUE Original reports when, where and how often each document is opened and shared.
Implementing digital credentials takes about two weeks for a simple setup, about four weeks for a standard one and eight to twelve weeks for a complex one with API integration. The time depends on the number of credential types, the integration method and how many people must approve the design.
Simple, 2 weeks: a small organisation with one credential type, issuing from the dashboard. One person can handle it. Week 1 covers setup, design and training. Week 2 covers the pilot, adjustments and launch.
Standard, 4 weeks: a mid-sized organisation with several credential types, its own branding and data from existing systems, run by an operations lead with IT support. Week 1 is planning, setup and design, week 2 integration and staff training, week 3 the pilot, and week 4 adjustments and the full launch.
Complex, 8 to 12 weeks: a large organisation with full API integration, several systems, a compliance review and wide training. It needs a project team: a project manager, developers, operations and compliance. Weeks 1 to 2 go to requirements and alignment, weeks 3 to 6 to setup, API development, design and workflows, weeks 7 to 8 to integration tests, training and the pilot, and weeks 9 to 12 to launch and follow-up.
Most organisations land between standard and complex. Launch the core first. Add the rest after.
The most common problems in a digital credentials implementation are errors in recipient data, slow design approval and a scope that keeps growing, and each has a simple fix. Names are misspelled and email addresses are wrong in the source data, so validate the data and add a review step before anything is issued.
Design stalls when too many people have opinions. Limit the reviewers, set a deadline and start from a ready design instead of a blank page. When requirements grow mid-project, define the smallest launch that works and park the rest as phase two.
Staff prefer the old process until they see the time it saves, so involve them in the demo and train them properly. API work often takes longer than planned; issue from the dashboard while development continues, and use a ready integration where one exists. Recipients sometimes wonder what they have received. A clear delivery email and a short guide to sharing and verifying solve most of it.
A digital credentials implementation checklist covers five phases: planning, software choice, setup, launch and optimisation. Tick off each phase before moving to the next.
Start issuing digital credentials with TRUE Original by picking one credential type, such as the course certificate you issue most often, and booking a demo built on it. Book a demo to see your own certificate as a TRUE Original document, or open the TRUE API if your developers want to start with the five endpoints.
One credential type is enough to see what happens next. Great Place To Work has issued close to a thousand certifications as TRUE Original documents, and they have been viewed well over a hundred thousand times. More than a hundred views per certificate.
Great Place to Work. Challenge: Issuing workplace certification badges globally with consistent branding
Every organisation we work with started with the same question. Give us thirty minutes and we will show you what your own documents would be worth.
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