Guide

Buying on Veriroo, and what happens after you pay

Published 23 September 2026 — Buying

The moment that matters when buying art online is not the payment. It is the gap between paying and holding the thing, and who is carrying the risk during it.

Originals and limited editions

You click Buy, and your payment is held in escrow by Stripe. It is not released to the seller.

The seller ships. When you confirm you have received the artwork, three things happen at once: the payment is released, ownership transfers to you on the record, and any royalty due is paid to the original creator. If the piece carries a Certificate of Authenticity it is issued to your account, and every limited edition carries one.

Until you confirm, the money is not the seller’s. That is the whole mechanism, and it is why the confirm step is yours rather than automatic.

Adding a certificate at checkout

If the artist has not included a certificate and the piece qualifies, you can tick Add a Certificate of Authenticity when you buy, for a small fee.

That is the only moment a buyer can add one. Once a piece has sold, a certificate needs an expert verification, which costs considerably more. It is worth the tick.

Open prints, which work differently

Prints are bought on the Prints page or in an artist’s shop rather than the marketplace, and you can buy one without an account: your email, name and delivery address, then pay.

You get an order email and a dispatch email, each with a View your order link. Keep those emails. That link is the only way back to your order. If you sign in or create an account later, Add to my account on the order page moves it into your Purchases.

There is no escrow and no confirm step, because there is no seller to ship to you: a fine art lab prints it and posts it, and Veriroo is the seller. If it arrives damaged, send a photo and you get a replacement or a refund.

A print gives you a good print. It does not give you ownership of the artwork, a certificate, or a number in an edition. The artist keeps the original and the rights to the image, and none of that is hidden: open prints are labelled as such everywhere they appear.

Do you need an account?

For an original or a limited edition, yes. You create or confirm a buyer profile during your first purchase, and your pieces and ownership records then live in your account. That is not a growth tactic, it is that owning a registered piece means holding a record, and a record needs somewhere to live.

For an open print, no.

What to look at before you buy

Every piece has a public record, and it is worth thirty seconds. Look at whether it holds a certificate, whether an independent verifier has examined it and what they concluded, and whether the ownership chain is continuous or has a gap in it.

A gap is not proof of anything. Plenty of genuine work has a patchy history, especially older pieces. But a complete record is worth more than an incomplete one, and the price should reflect which you are getting.