Argyle alternative

Argyle covers US payroll. Cr3dentials covers everywhere people earn.

Banks, gig platforms, e-commerce stores, payment processors, creator dashboards, government identity portals, plus US payroll. One integration. One attestation per session.

Argyle is a solid product. If you are building for the US, verifying payroll income, and your compliance team is comfortable with an aggregator holding raw account data, it does that job well. That is not the argument, which is that most of the world does not earn through US payroll. Gig workers, freelancers, merchants, and creators have real income and real cash flow. None of it shows up in a payroll connector. That is the gap Cr3dentials was built for.

What we verify

Six categories, one integration

Cr3dentials is platform-agnostic by architecture. Coverage spans every category of source data lenders underwrite against, not just payroll.

Banks

  • Chase
  • Bank of America
  • Wells Fargo
  • Citi
  • Capital One

Plus European, African, and LATAM equivalents. Verifiable: average balance, recurring deposit patterns, account ownership.

Payroll

  • ADP
  • Gusto
  • Workday
  • Paychex
  • Rippling

Verifiable: gross monthly income, employer verification, YTD earnings, employment duration. This is the one category where Argyle is genuinely deeper on US coverage.

Gig & freelance

  • Uber
  • Lyft
  • DoorDash
  • Instacart
  • Upwork
  • Fiverr
  • TaskRabbit

Verifiable: trailing 30/60/90-day earnings, payout consistency, platform tenure. The income signal traditional underwriting cannot read.

Merchant & creator

  • Stripe
  • Shopify
  • Square
  • Etsy
  • Amazon Seller
  • Substack
  • Patreon

Verifiable: trailing revenue, dispute rate, payout consistency.

Government identity

  • gov.uk
  • US state DMV portals
  • National ID portals

Verifiable: age, residency, without the user handing over the actual document.

Subscription & content

  • Streaming platforms
  • SaaS subscriptions
  • Content platforms

Verifiable: active subscription status, account tenure, structured activity history.

Side by side

Cr3dentials vs Argyle

PropertyCr3dentialsArgyle
Source platform categories coveredSix: banks, payroll, gig & freelance, merchant & creator, government identity, subscription & content.Primarily one: US payroll and employment.
Geographic coverageGlobal outside the EU. US, Nigeria, South Africa, LATAM, Southeast Asia.Predominantly US-focused. Coverage outside the US is limited by connector availability.
What the partner receivesOnly the fields your underwriting asked for, and nothing else.The full aggregated income or employment record from the source connector.
Data outside the partner's actual needNever extracted. The schema is enforced inside the enclave, so anything outside it never leaves.Returned by default. You filter it in your application code, after the raw data has already reached your servers.
Where raw user data livesOnly inside the hardware-attested enclave, briefly, then memory is wiped.In the aggregator's infrastructure, typically retained beyond the session, and in the partner's servers.
Cryptographic provenancezkTLS proof that the response came from the real source platform, unmodified, at the time the session ran.API trust only. You rely on the aggregator's version of what the source returned.
Independently verifiable audit chainGCP-signed attestation JWT tied to the published workload image digest. Any third party can verify offline against Google's attestation root.Not available. You trust the aggregator's logs.
Onchain consumptionAttestations anchored via Ethereum Attestation Service. DeFi protocols and smart contracts can consume the proof directly.No onchain attestation path.
User installs anythingNo. Iframe-only flow inside the partner's app.No. Web-flow authentication.

Which to choose

Pick the one that fits the use case

Both products solve income verification but for different buyers. Argyle's strengths are real; so are ours. Here is how to tell which one belongs in your stack.

Pick Argyle

US payroll, deep connector library

Your product is US-only, payroll is the primary income signal, and your compliance team is comfortable with an aggregator holding raw records. Argyle's depth on US employer integrations is the strongest reason to go with them.

  • US-only or US-first product
  • Payroll or employment verification is the whole use case
  • Compliance posture accepts an intermediary holding raw records
  • US payroll connector depth is the deciding factor
Pick Cr3dentials

Anything beyond US payroll

Your underwriting needs income signal from sources Argyle does not connect to, or your users are outside the US. Bank balances, gig earnings, merchant revenue, creator income, identity attributes, and subscription tenure are all in scope, plus US payroll where you need it.

  • Bank, gig, merchant, identity, or creator platform data
  • Operating in Nigeria, South Africa, LATAM, Southeast Asia, or globally
  • Onchain underwriting that needs a portable, offline-verifiable attestation
  • Compliance posture requires hardware-enforced data minimization

What makes us structurally different

Three things you also get with Cr3dentials

Coverage is the headline reason most teams pick Cr3dentials. These three things are what the compliance and risk teams stay for.

01

Schema enforced in hardware, not in code

The verification schema is agreed at integration and built directly into the workload running inside a Google Cloud Confidential Space enclave. Cr3dentials operators cannot change the schema at runtime. An attacker who fully compromises Cr3dentials production infrastructure still cannot read anything outside it.

02

Source credentials never leave the user's browser

The verification flow runs in a cross-origin iframe from a Cr3dentials-controlled origin. The TLS handshake is between the user's browser and the real source platform. Cr3dentials servers only see encrypted traffic. With aggregators, the user's session terminates inside the aggregator's infrastructure.

03

Independently verifiable, offline

Every attestation includes a GCP-signed JWT tied to the published workload image digest. A regulator, auditor, or downstream lender can verify the chain against Google's attestation root years later, without contacting us. Aggregator outputs are vendor claims. Cr3dentials outputs are independently checkable evidence.

FAQ

Common questions

Does Cr3dentials cover the same US payroll platforms Argyle does?

Cr3dentials covers the major US payroll platforms including ADP, Gusto, Workday, Paychex, and Rippling, and extends into banks, gig platforms, merchant dashboards, and government identity portals. Argyle is genuinely ahead in raw breadth within US payroll specifically, which is why we say pick Argyle if that is your entire use case. If your verification need goes beyond payroll, or you operate outside the US, that advantage does not apply to you.

Are you just hiding the data Argyle returns? What is different?

The difference is who sees the raw response. With an aggregator, their servers see the full source response and extract fields for your application. With Cr3dentials, the encrypted proof is opened only inside a hardware-attested enclave. The schema evaluator extracts only the agreed fields, then memory is wiped. Cr3dentials operators cannot read the underlying data either. That is enforced by the hardware boundary, not by policy.

Can Argyle integrate with an onchain protocol?

Argyle does not have a first-class onchain attestation path. If you are building DeFi underwriting, you end up bridging Argyle outputs through an off-chain oracle, which reintroduces the same trust assumption. Cr3dentials anchors attestations via Ethereum Attestation Service, so smart contracts can verify directly without an oracle in the middle.

How long does integration take compared to Argyle?

Two API calls and a webhook: initiate session, embed iframe, receive attestation. The one-time setup is agreeing your verification schemas at integration. Most partners are live in days. Because the schema is fixed at integration, you also get the audit guarantee automatically: you cannot quietly expand the data you receive over time.

How do we verify Cr3dentials is not over-sharing?

Three checks, all offline. Verify the Cr3dentials signature on the attestation against our published public key. Verify the GCP attestation JWT against Google's public attestation root, which proves the workload ran in real hardware. Compare the workload image digest against the SHA-256 of our published enclave container image. If all three pass, the enclave was provably running the published code, not a modified version.

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