Stop asking for a PAN before you've earned a rupee

Here is an embarrassing sentence to write about your own product: we were asking people for their PAN, their bank account, and their registered address before they had earned a single rupee. It was the heaviest possible ask, delivered at the exact moment a new host had the least reason to trust us. And it sat right in the path, so plenty of people met the wall and quietly left.

The logic was not wrong, exactly — you cannot pay someone out without knowing who they are and where the money goes — and we handle that Aadhaar and PAN carefully. But we had confused two different moments. Listing a service and taking a booking needs nothing from us but a page. Getting paid out needs the verification. We had bolted the second requirement onto the first, and it was costing us the people we most wanted to keep.

Sell first, verify when there is money on the line

So we unbolted them. You can now create your services, publish your page, and take real bookings with no verification at all. Nothing about listing requires a PAN. The verification only becomes relevant at the moment it actually is relevant: when you have earned money and it is time to send it to you.

The difference is entirely about trust and timing. Asking a stranger for their bank details before they have seen the product work is asking them to take all the risk on faith. Asking a host who has just made their first booking to verify so we can pay them is asking them to finish a transaction they are already winning. Same form, completely different feeling, because now there is money on the table that is theirs.

The unglamorous half

Deferring the ask meant we also had to make the earnings visible to a host who had never touched the verification screen. A host who earned before starting the process still needs to see 'you have ₹X waiting' — so we made that number show up on the dashboard whether or not they had ever begun. It is a small plumbing change that matters, because the nudge is worthless if the person it is meant for cannot see what they are owed.

None of this lowers the bar for actually getting paid — the verification is the same, the checks are the same, the money still only moves to a verified account. We just stopped demanding it as a toll on the way in. You prove who you are when there is a reason to; until then, you get to just run your business.

Ask for the heaviest thing at the moment of most trust, not the least. A form feels different the instant there is money behind it that is yours.

The bit worth keeping

If you have been putting off setting up because the first thing we wanted was your PAN — that is gone. Publish your services, take your bookings, and we will only ask for the paperwork once there is something waiting to be paid out to you.