Private messaging

Private messaging.
On your terms.

Message people without handing over your phone number. Stay anonymous for as long as you like, and prove who you are the moment it actually matters.

Get Verus See how it works

Exhibiting at Web Summit LisbonOn our own ALPHA stand, 9 to 12 November 2026. Come and try Verus. Watch the explainer (2 min, with sound)

Press release · Pitch deck · Press kit

One message. Then everyone.

Everybody who joins brings the people they already talk to.

What is Verus

Messaging should give you more control.

Verus is a messaging app. You send messages, photographs, video and files, you make groups, and you do it on your phone and your laptop.

What is different is what it asks of you. There is no phone number, no email address and no profile, because there is nothing to sign up to. You get an address, and the only people who can use it are people you let in. How messaging without a phone number works →

And when it matters that somebody knows it is really you, you can prove it, to that one person, and take the proof back afterwards.

Verus on the Mac: a verified counterparty writing in French, each message shown with its English translation underneath

The same conversation, on both, from the running builds. The closing summary card is an illustration.

The idea

Nobody, until you choose otherwise.

No public profile. No phone number to give out. Nobody typing your name into a search box and finding you. The only people who can reach you are the people you decided could.

01

There is nothing to sign up for.

Open it and it makes you an address, on the phone, in a second. No number, no email, no name for anybody to ask you for later.

The Verus welcome screen, headed You start as nobody

02

There is no directory.

Nobody can look you up, because there is nothing to look you up in. You hand somebody a code instead, and you choose whether it says who you are or nothing at all.

Choosing whether to appear anonymous or verified when letting somebody reach you

03

Good once. Gone in an hour.

The code works one time and then stops. It is made on the device and never stored anywhere it could be found again afterwards.

A single use Verus introduction code that stops working an hour after it is sealed

What it is

Private, and still a proper messenger.

Conversations, groups, photographs, video, files, disappearing messages and twenty languages. Every one of the things below is running today on real devices, which is a different sentence from a list of what is planned.

An address, not an account

Made on the phone the first time you open it. Nothing to sign up for, and nothing to recover.

Proof, when you want it

Attach a verified identity to a conversation, and take it off again. The address underneath does not change.

Nobody arrives unannounced

A stranger with your code has to ask. You allow, decline or block, and name them whatever you like.

Phone, Mac, or both

The same conversation on every device you have added, each one holding its own keys. One device free, up to five on Plus.

Groups

A conversation with several people in it. The relay never learns that a group exists at all.

Disappearing messages

Set a timer on a conversation and messages go by themselves, on both phones.

Twenty languages

Write in yours, read in yours. The translation happens on the phone in your hand.

Screenshots do not work

Android refuses the capture. iOS gives no app a way to stop one, so Verus notices and tells the other person.

Photos, video and files

Encrypted before they leave, and stripped of the place they were taken and the camera that took them.

Messages on your lock screen

A new message reaches your lock screen whether Verus is open or not. The signal that wakes the phone carries no words and no sender.

Block and report

Both in every conversation. A report carries only what you choose to attach to it.

The Verus conversation list on iPhone, with a verified counterparty at the top

Things that are half built are named as half built rather than left to be assumed from a feature list. The whole state of the build →

Who gets through

A stranger is a request.

Not a message. Somebody who has your code still has to ask, and nothing of theirs reaches you until you have said yes.

Allow
Decline
Block

Allow them and you give them a name, on your phone, that is never sent anywhere. Block them and they cannot try again.

Demonstration: the face shown is AI-generated. The request, Why verify and chat screens are from the running build.

Your language

Write in yours.
They read in theirs.

You type the way you always type. It arrives in whatever language their phone is set to. They reply in theirs, and you read it in yours. Neither of you turns anything on, and neither of you has to say which language you speak.

What they actually wrote stays above the line, so you are never reading a machine's guess without being told that is what it is. Twenty languages today.

And it happens on the phone in your hand. Every other messenger that offers this sends your words to a translation service to do it, which hands a stranger the one thing the app was supposed to protect. Nothing here leaves the device, so nobody learns what you said, and nobody learns what language you read in.

What else never leaves →

CL Camille Laurent Verified · Paris

Before I send the completion statement, can you confirm it is you?

Avant d'envoyer l'acte de vente, pouvez-vous confirmer que c'est bien vous ? Before I send the completion statement, can you confirm it is you? translated on this device

Just did. The claim is live for another 24 hours.

La vente est confirmée pour vendredi. Completion is confirmed for Friday. translated on this device

Every device

Your conversations follow you.

Start on the phone, carry on at the laptop, and it is the same conversation rather than a copy of it. Each device holds its own keys and a message is encrypted separately for every one of them, so losing one does not hand anybody the others. One device is free and more than one is the subscription.

The Verus conversation list on the Mac, with the verified counterparty at the top

The difference

Anonymous when you want.
Verified when it matters.

Most apps make you say who you are to get in, and then spend the rest of their life protecting the answer. Verus never asks. Identity is something you can choose to prove, to one person, for a day, and then take back.

7PDM-0F7X-ND2Y-259J-FN9X-JQTM

No name, no number, no email. Nobody can tell who is behind it, including the deployment carrying the messages.

The address never changed.

Identity is something a Verus account can prove. It is not what the account is. Revoking a claim leaves a working anonymous address behind, which is the whole design in one sentence.

The Verus identity screen, moving between an anonymous address and a live Confrmo claim

You ask to be verified

From your own profile, whenever you want. Nothing about the conversation changes while you do it.

Confrmo checks it is really you

Your face and your document are shown to Confrmo, and never to Verus. Verus is told the answer and nothing else.

A signed claim rides along

It expires, and you can take it off in one tap. What is left underneath is the anonymous address you started with.

How Confrmo verifies an identity →

Verifying opens Confrmo, which mints a real VCode. Verus is told the answer and never sees your face or your document.

What is never kept

Private means more than encrypted.

Every messenger encrypts what you write. Almost all of them still keep a record of who you wrote to, when, how often and from where, which is frequently the more revealing half.

On your phoneBefore I send the completion statement, can you confirm it is you?

What the relay sees D4B2907E5C3A18F6D4B2907E5C3A18F6D4B2907E5C3A18

On theirsBefore I send the completion statement, can you confirm it is you?

Between you means between you. The relay stores something it cannot open and deletes it the moment it is collected.

What conventional infrastructure accumulates

Alice → Server → Bob

sender recipient time frequency device ip address contact graph

What the Verus relay holds

→ recipient key

encrypted payload expiry

The table has no column for who sent it. That record is not protected, or minimised, or deleted on a schedule. It is never created in the first place.

Your conversations should not become somebody else's data.

That is a claim about a database, so it is published as one. The schema is read live from the running server, by your browser, on a page you can check for yourself.

Explore the technology

What leaves

Nothing leaves the conversation.

Encryption stops somebody in the middle reading a message. It does nothing about the copy somebody takes at the other end, the export that lands in a downloads folder, or the years of history sitting on a server waiting to be asked for. Those are the three ways a private conversation actually gets out, so they are dealt with here one at a time.

A screenshot comes out empty

Android refuses the capture outright. iOS gives no application a way to stop one, so Verus does the honest thing instead: it notices, and it tells the other person it happened. Screen recording and mirroring are blocked on both, and on the Mac the window is excluded from screen capture entirely.

There is no export

No save the thread, no forward to another app, no backup file, no archive to hand over. You cannot even select the text in a message to copy it. A conversation exists on the devices that are in it, and there is no button anywhere that turns it into a file.

Nothing is stored on a server

The relay holds one encrypted envelope and an expiry, and deletes it the moment the recipient collects it. There is no history, no account in your name, and no column recording who sent anything. Seize every server tomorrow and there is nothing on them anybody could read.

Said plainly because the alternative is worse: an app that implies it can stop an iPhone screenshot, when no app can, is teaching somebody to trust a thing that is not true.

Verus Relay

Carried by people. Heard by nobody.

When you call somebody on Verus, the call travels through a Verus Relay. That is the everyday route, not a backup: it is what stops the person you call learning where you are. Some relays are run by us. Others sit in people's homes. None of them can hear a word and none of them keeps a record that the call happened.

Some relays also have a radio inside. The radio is only the fallback, for when the internet or the mobile signal is gone.

–relays online now

–with a radio

–countries

Your phone asks the relays. Several at once, and it waits a quarter of a second at most.
The first to answer carries the call. Not the nearest on a map. The quickest from where you are standing now.
It passes on sound it cannot open. The audio is sealed on your phone and only opened on theirs. The relay has no key.
And it keeps nothing. No list of who called whom, no length, no time. A relay reports every minute that it is alive and how much it carried, never whose.

What the relay is handed

16 bytescall token 12 bytesnonce the restsealed audio, a fiftieth of a second 16 bytesseal

It can see that packets are arriving, about fifty a second, how big they are, and the internet connection each came from, because it has to send the other half back there.

It cannot see who is calling, who is answering, or a single word. No name, no phone number, no Verus address, and nothing is kept once the call ends.

When the internet goes

Verus keeps working when the internet doesn't.

Every day, your calls and messages travel over the internet through a Verus Relay. If the internet or the signal goes, relays with a radio are the fallback. Your phone hands a sealed message to a relay nearby by Bluetooth. The relays pass it along by radio to one that still has internet, which delivers it.

One message, no signal

Bluetooth in. Radio across. Internet out.

01Sealed on your phoneLocked for the person it is for, before it leaves your hand.
02Bluetooth to the nearest relayYour phone has no signal. The box on the shelf takes it.
03Radio to a relay with internetCut into signed pieces, sealed again for the box receiving them.
04Out to VerusKept safe until it is through, then posted as normal.
05Opened on their phoneThe only place it ever becomes words again.

On 30 September 2026 an iPhone in Airplane mode sent a Verus message by Bluetooth through a relay and an Android phone received it. Relays pass messages to each other by radio, encrypted, and the whole chain has run with a second relay standing in for the phone; a real phone message across the whole chain is next.

Relay to relay

The boxes still talk.

Relays with a radio inside say who they are over the air, and pass messages to each other with no internet anywhere in the path. Every message is signed by a key that was made inside the box's own security chip and never leaves it, and a message carried for a phone is encrypted as well. The box at the other end checks the signature and signs a receipt back.

A message signed by a key it does not know is refused, which is the whole point: on the air anybody can transmit, so a box that believed anything it heard would be worse than no box at all. A message from a phone with no signal rides the same way, as the strip above shows.

See the live network Host a relay

Two relays, radio only. Press Send.

One radio frame, as it goes on air

VR 2 MVerus radio, version 2, a message de31ac81which box sent it time · seqso a replay is refused 7da9a136which box it is for “Kettle’s on”the note itself 64 bytessignature from the chip

A note between two boxes is signed, not secret. A message from your phone travels inside frames like this sealed twice: once so only the person it is for can open it, and again so only the relay receiving it can unpack it.

2 to 3 sa message and its signed receipt

868 MHzthe licence-free UK and European band

1%of each hour on air, the limit on the channel relays use, counted by every relay

0fakes accepted: unknown keys, replays and forgeries are refused

The difference, plainly

A different starting point.

Almost every messenger begins by asking who you are and then spends the rest of its life protecting the answer. Verus begins by not asking.

Identity comes first, and everything is built on it.

Communication comes first. Identity is something you can add.

Anybody holding your number can put a message on your phone.

A stranger is a request, and you answer it.

You are findable, because being findable is the product.

There is no directory, so there is nothing to be found in.

The server knows who spoke to whom, and keeps it.

There is no column for who sent it, so there is nothing to keep.

You are told who somebody is by their display name.

You can have it proved, and check the proof yourself.

The left hand column is a fair description of mainstream messaging, not of any one product. Verus named against WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram and Keet →

Underneath

Underneath the simplicity is serious engineering.

None of it is invented. Standard constructions, used the way they are meant to be used, because a new cryptographic primitive inside a messenger is a liability and not a feature. All of it is written down in one place, at length, with the parts that are not built named as not built.

End to end encryption
A ratchet per conversation
Keys held on the device
Secure Enclave and StrongBox
A relay that stores no sender
Client side groups
On device translation
Screen capture controls
Sovereign deployment
A build status that names its gaps

And one claim you do not have to take from us at all: the relay is asked, live, by your own browser, which columns it holds and which it declares it never holds.

Explore Verus Technology

Intellectual property

Applicant: Verus Communications Ltd
Inventor: Louis-James Davis
Filed: 7 October 2026
Office: UK Intellectual Property Office

Title as filed

Verifying the origin of a call

All fifteen applications Security and intellectual property

Team

The people who build it.

Emmet Memery

Chairman

LinkedIn
Karl McCaffrey

CEO

LinkedIn
Louis-James Davis

Founder & CTO

LinkedIn Profile
Andy Giblin

Head of Engineering
Feroz Khan

Developer, Intent & Emotion Detection
Brian Melzack

Sales & Marketing, USA & Europe
Diwacker Singh

Sales & Marketing, India
Adam Crofts

Sales & Marketing, USA & Europe

Verus is operated by Verus Communications Ltd, company number 17429651, and powered by Confrmo Ltd, company number 17203914, which builds it and issues the identity claim.

The ecosystem

One trust infrastructure.

Identity

Biometric attestation and the signed claim it produces.

Verification

Visual session authentication that works without a connection.

Email

Verified email, certified at the point it is sent.

Lokka Documents

Screenshot and forwarding controls inside a verified session. In development.

When it matters

For the conversations that matter.

When a message moves money, knowing the sender matters.

An instruction arrives to change the bank details on a completion. Before anybody acts on it, the person behind the conversation proves who they are, and the proof is checked against the deployment that issued it rather than taken on the strength of a display name.

140 reports, £10.97m lost, an average of £78,393 a case.

That is residential conveyancing fraud reported to Action Fraud between April 2024 and March 2025. City of London Police describe the method plainly: criminals get into the email chain between buyer, seller, solicitor and agent, then send a convincing message asking for the money to go somewhere else.

The usual answer is to ring back and check. In April 2026 the Solicitors Regulation Authority told firms to assess the heightened risk of relying on video calls to identify and verify a client, because deepfakes have been used to deceive liveness detection tests. Verus is built for the case where the channel itself carries the proof.

City of London Police Solicitors Regulation Authority

A Verus conversation with a verified counterparty, discussing a completion statement

Keeping your own number out of it.

Selling something, meeting somebody, hiring somebody, dealing with a stranger once. None of that needs to end with them holding the number that rings your phone for the rest of your life.

Talking to somebody in another language.

A supplier, a landlord, a relative, a colleague in another country. Both of you write the way you normally write, and neither of you sends the conversation to a translation service to make that work.

Saying something that should not become a permanent record.

A conversation with a doctor, a solicitor or a friend, where the risk is not somebody reading it in transit but a copy of it existing at all, five years from now, on somebody's server.

Where the fact that you are talking is the secret.

Two parties to an acquisition, a journalist and a source, a board and its adviser. The message being unreadable is not enough if the record of the call still exists.

An organisation that needs this under its own keys, in its own jurisdiction, can run its own deployment. Sovereign deployment →

Private should feel simple.

Verus is on Google Play for Android and you can download it for the Mac today. The iPhone app is with Apple for review: leave your email below and you will hear the day it is out.

Get it on Google Play Download for Mac

Version 2.0, build 88, macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon and Intel. Installing it and checking it is ours.

Joining a company team? You'll also need Confrmo

It confirms you are a real person, so the team knows who joined. How joining a team works.

App Store Google Play

iPhone

Built and running · With Apple for review

Mac

Built and running · Download it

Android

Built and running · Get it on Google Play

Windows

Early release · Download for Windows

On iPhone? Be first in.

Android and Mac are ready now, above. The iPhone app is with Apple for review. Leave your email and we send exactly one, the day you can install it. Nothing else, ever.

This list is the website's, not the service's. The row is an email address and the day you joined, and there is nothing else in it: no name, no IP address, no tracking, and nothing passed to anybody else. Your Verus account will still carry no email, because there is still no column for one, which you can watch the running server say for itself on the technology page. Ask us and the row goes.

And do not take our word for any of it. Talk to a real account on the live deployment, and check the claim it carries against the server that issued it, from your own browser, so this site never learns which claims you check.

Try it against the live deployment Verify a claim

Questions and answers Verus compared

hello@verusapp.co.uk · Investment · Sovereign partnership · Enterprise pilot · Licensing

Private messaging.On your terms.