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You've just set up your seller account, and one question keeps nagging: "I'm on Occasional, does that mean buyers see me as less trustworthy?" Or the opposite one: "I pay for the Professional subscription, so I must automatically rank above everyone else, right?"
Both questions come from the same, very natural confusion. On most marketplaces, the more you pay, the higher you sit. On Kinkoza, that's not how it works. A seller account is read across three independent dimensions, and mixing them up means missing how the platform actually works. Here's how to keep them straight.
Seller status: the only axis that affects your fees
Status is your declared level of commercial activity, backed by a matching verification tier. It's the only one of the three axes that has a direct impact on the service fee your buyers pay.
Status | Service fee (buyer) | Seller subscription | Verification |
|---|---|---|---|
Occasional | 10% | Free | Light KYC |
Regular | 7% | €59/month or €590/year | Standard KYB |
Professional | 5% | €99/month or €990/year | Full KYB |
(Annual billing includes 2 free months on both paid statuses.)
Each status maps to a real seller profile:
Occasional — you sell equipment now and then, on the side of your main business. No commitment, no entry cost.
Regular — you source from other platforms and move equipment on a regular basis, without running a full-fledged shop.
Professional — trading, rental, retail: reselling is a business in its own right. This status unlocks a dedicated agency profile, team seats, and the highest verification tier.
The subscription: not a choice, a counterpart
The first source of confusion: many sellers assume they're "picking a subscription plan," the way you'd pick a software tier. In reality, the subscription isn't an independent axis — it's simply the counterpart of status. Occasional is free; Regular and Professional are paid because they unlock lower service fees for your buyers, a higher verification tier, and for Professional, agency-grade tools.
There's no separate pricing grid to browse: the price flows directly from the status you're aiming for.
Reputation: the axis that can't be bought
This is where the distinction really matters. Reputation — Verified, Confirmed, Certified — has nothing to do with status or subscription. It's built entirely from your actual transaction history.
Level | Requirements |
|---|---|
Verified | KYB validated + at least 1 successful transaction |
Confirmed | ≥ 5 successful transactions, ≥ 6 months on the platform, dispute rate < 5% |
Certified | ≥ 20 successful transactions, ≥ 12 months on the platform, dispute rate < 2% (manual review may apply) |
In practice: a Professional seller who just signed up is not Certified. They hold the highest status, but have zero transactions behind them — their reputation starts at zero, just like anyone else's. Conversely, a seller who stays on Occasional can absolutely reach Certified if their track record is solid.
This is a deliberate design choice. The reputation naming (Verified / Confirmed / Certified) was chosen specifically so it could never be mistaken for a status level (Occasional / Regular / Professional): you can't pay for trust, you can only earn it. That's exactly what gives the badge its value.
The real journey: you don't choose upfront, you progress
Another commonly missed point: there's no status to pick at sign-up. Every new seller starts on Occasional, no exceptions — that's by design, to keep onboarding frictionless.
Moving up to Regular or Professional happens later, at your own initiative, once your activity justifies it. It automatically triggers the matching verification tier: official company registers (KBIS, Kammer, CBE depending on your country), intra-EU VAT number, identification of company officers, sanctions screening, and biometric verification of the company officer for the higher tiers. Once that check clears, you receive the "Verified by Kinkoza" badge, with a target turnaround of under 4 hours.
And if you move up in status along the way, listings you've already published aren't affected.
Why keeping these separate benefits everyone
Once the three axes are clear in your mind, the logic of the model falls into place. Service fees, always paid by the buyer, go down as the seller's status goes up: 10% on Occasional, 7% on Regular, 5% on Professional. The more you sell, the more it makes sense to move up in status, since it directly makes your listings more competitive for buyers.
But that mechanism only works because reputation stays out of reach of money. If trust could be bought alongside a status, the badge would stop meaning anything. By keeping the three axes strictly separate, Kinkoza makes sure status reflects declared activity, the subscription is its logical counterpart, and reputation remains the one thing nothing can buy.
One last, non-negotiable point of vocabulary: on Kinkoza, we talk about "service fees," never "commission." That's not a semantic detail — it's what sets a marketplace apart from a broker, and it's worth keeping in mind the next time you check your invoice.
In short:
Status (Occasional/Regular/Professional) is the only axis that determines your service fees.
The subscription isn't a separate choice: it's the counterpart of status.
Reputation (Verified/Confirmed/Certified) is earned through transaction history — it can never be bought.
Everyone starts on Occasional; you move up in status at your own pace, without losing the listings you've already published.
Smart connections, trusted transactions.
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