The High Cost of Compliance and Verification: Why QuickBooks and LinkedIn’s Practices Raise Ethical Concerns

In today’s digital economy, compliance and verification are critical parts of doing business. Companies must ensure that financial transactions are secure, user data is protected, and businesses are who they say they are. These goals are important, but the way some major platforms are going about it has raised serious concerns, especially for small Black-owned businesses that are already struggling to keep up.

QuickBooks has introduced a system where users are required to demonstrate PCI compliance, a set of security standards for handling credit card data. But instead of simply providing tools or resources to help businesses meet these standards, QuickBooks pushes users through a third-party vendor that charges fees just to label them as “compliant.” Similarly, LinkedIn has rolled out a paid verification system, asking users to pay in order to be recognized as legitimate professionals.

On the surface, both practices may appear reasonable. After all, compliance protects sensitive data, and verification helps weed out fake accounts. But when you look deeper, these models reveal themselves as less about protecting users and more about generating additional revenue streams for platforms that already make billions.

The Pros Compliance and Verification

To be fair, there are a few advantages to these systems:

• Security and Trust: PCI compliance ensures that businesses process payments safely, protecting both merchants and customers. Verification on LinkedIn may provide another layer of trust, helping users know that they are connecting with real professionals.

• Streamlined Process: By centralizing compliance or verification under one system, companies can argue that they are simplifying the process for small businesses or individuals.

• Potential Marketability: Being able to say a business is PCI compliant or that a LinkedIn account is verified can add credibility in the eyes of customers or clients.

  
  

The Cons Compliance and Verification

But the disadvantages, and the ethical concerns far outweigh the benefits.

• Unnecessary Financial Burden: Small businesses already pay to use these platforms. For QuickBooks, compliance fees become an additional cost just to keep using tools that already handle payment flows. For LinkedIn, verification fees essentially charge users for the right to have their identity confirmed.

• Paying to Hand Over Information: Compliance and verification both involve businesses or individuals providing sensitive personal and financial information. Forcing them to pay in order to share their own data is both illogical and exploitative.

• Unequal Impact on Small Black Businesses: Large corporations can absorb compliance or verification fees without issue. For small Black-owned businesses, however, these fees can be a barrier, cutting into already slim margins and making growth even harder.

• Revenue Over Responsibility: Stripe, PayPal, and other platforms manage compliance without charging users in this way. By comparison, QuickBooks’ approach looks more like a revenue scheme than a genuine security necessity. LinkedIn’s verification model mirrors the same issue, charging users for something that should be part of the platform’s duty to ensure authenticity.

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Why It Matters

The most troubling part of these practices is how they normalize monetizing security and trust. Compliance and verification are fundamental responsibilities of platforms that manage people’s money and personal data. By turning them into optional paid features, QuickBooks and LinkedIn are shifting the cost of responsibility away from themselves and onto the very businesses and individuals they are supposed to serve.

For small Black businesses in particular, this becomes a roadblock rather than a safeguard. These businesses often face limited access to capital and fewer safety nets. Every added fee is another barrier to entry. Instead of being a resource to empower small businesses, platforms like QuickBooks are creating hurdles that disproportionately harm the very entrepreneurs who need the most support.

The Bottom Line

Compliance and verification are important, but charging users to be labeled as compliant or verified is ethically unsound. It places an undue burden on small businesses while padding corporate revenue streams. It asks users to pay not only to use the platform but also to meet requirements that the platform itself should be ensuring as part of its core responsibility.

QuickBooks and LinkedIn may argue that these practices protect their users, but in reality, they undermine trust and highlight a troubling trend: major platforms treating security and authenticity as opportunities for profit rather than as obligations to their customers.

For small Black businesses, the message is clear. These practices are not built with us in mind. They are hurdles, not help. And unless we hold these companies accountable, they will continue to build revenue on the backs of those who can least afford it.

Compliance should not come with a price tag. Verification should not be a luxury. And for small Black businesses, these pay-to-play practices are not just inconvenient—they are detrimental.