How Do I Know a Buyer Is Real?
Written by Christopher Krassnig - Founder - Kairos Exchange and ZenoX Media. Last reviewed 4 September 2026.
You tell a real buyer apart by what they agree to, not by what they say. A serious one confirms an email address, signs the NDA in the product, and lets a person review their funds before your exact numbers open. Someone fishing for revenue before any of that, or pushing you to private email straight away, has told you what they came for.
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What Is a Fake Buyer Actually After?
Three things, and none of them is your store. The first is your numbers, asked for early and asked for free: revenue, margin, the supplier, the ad account that makes it work. Which figure they ask for does not matter. That they ask before agreeing to anything is the tell. The second is the channel. A buyer who wants your personal email or your phone before an NDA exists is buying a conversation nobody can look at afterwards. The third is a payment page, and it usually arrives late, once you are invested. A link to an escrow or settlement service that is not the provider your platform names is where the pretence ends.
What Has to Be True Before You Share a Number?
On Kairos the order is fixed, and it is fixed in your favour. A buyer confirms their email address before they can sign the NDA, and that signature is stored with the NDA version, the IP address it came from and the browser that sent it. Then a person reviews their funds. Only after that review clears do your exact revenue, your revenue-after-ads figure, your real brand name and the verification memo open to them, and the look itself costs nothing. The refundable EUR 250 deposit sits on the offer instead. Their questions run in a thread on your listing that only a buyer who has cleared those gates can post into, so the approach leaves a record rather than a memory.
Can a Fake Buyer Actually Take Your Money?
Not through the deal itself, because neither party picks where the money goes. The whole sale price goes to Escrow.com, the licensed escrow provider, before anything transfers, and it never touches a Kairos account. Release runs on four conditions in order: the full amount funded in escrow, the purchase agreement signed by both sides, every critical asset handed over and ticked off, and the buyer confirming the transfer. One critical item still open blocks the close. That fixed sequence is what makes a bad-faith ask visible, because the ask always sits outside it. Send the domain first as a gesture. Take payment on a page they chose. Hand over the store admin while the money is still on its way. Wherever you are selling, check an escrow link by ignoring it and typing the provider's own address into your browser.
What Can a Funds Review Not Tell You?
Whether the money is actually there. The review is a typed full legal name, a country, a US state where that applies and a euro figure the buyer declares, plus an optional note, read by a person on the Kairos side who either clears it or leaves it pending. No bank statement is involved, no document, and no independent evidence of any kind. That is why a cleared buyer's status reads Reviewed rather than Verified, and why the panel tells that buyer in its own words to treat it as a sanity check, not proof of funds. Read it as a filter rather than a background check. It raises the cost of pretending, it does not prove anyone can pay, and a seller who needs more than that has to ask for it directly: a bank letter, a named lender, a lawyer on the other side who answers the phone.
Answered. Now Get Your Numbers Proven
Sellers on the list go through verification first when we open. Reading up is step one. Having your revenue proven from your own orders is step two.