Product Requirements Document

Working draft. Consistent with CONTEXT.md (cash-pay therapy marketplace, 15% platform fee, UK first → English-speaking expatriates worldwide → broader markets (incl. the US) later, bootstrapped). ⚠️ Items tied to legal/clinical sign-off are flagged. Last updated: [PLACEHOLDER: date]

1. Vision & overview

Faresay is a two-sided marketplace that connects people seeking therapy with vetted, licensed therapists, and handles discovery, matching, scheduling, secure video sessions, and payments. Clients pay out of pocket; Faresay takes a 15% platform fee (10% for founding therapists; therapist keeps 85%, or up to 90% as a founding therapist). The product must feel trustworthy, fast, and private — it handles sensitive mental-health data and must make the "not a crisis service" boundary unmistakable.

Trust is the core product. The primary promise is that every therapist is manually verified — licensed, identity-verified, interviewed, and quality-reviewed — with reviews, response times, and a transparent experience surfaced to clients. Matching (fit) sits on top of trust, not the other way round.

Beachhead. After the UK home market, the near-term focus is internationally mobile, English-speaking professionals (e.g. Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, the UAE, Thailand, Vietnam, and across Europe) seeking culturally-compatible therapists who understand relocation stress, isolation, identity, and belonging. Broader markets — including the US and its multi-state machinery — are a later, optional phase (see §7), not the near-term build.

2. Goals & non-goals

Goals - Let a client find, book, and pay for a suitable licensed therapist with minimal friction. - Let a therapist get matched clients and run sessions with low admin, keeping 85% of the fee (up to 90% as a founding therapist). - Make trust visible and verifiable: manual verification, identity checks, interviews, quality review, reviews, response times — surfaced on every profile. - Serve internationally mobile, English-speaking clients: timezone-aware scheduling, cross-cultural/multilingual matching, and country-correct crisis signposting. - Enforce trust & safety: verification, privacy, crisis signposting, compliance.

Non-goals (initial) - Insurance billing / claims (cash-pay only initially). - Faresay providing clinical care itself (clinicians are independent). - Crisis/emergency intervention (explicitly out of scope; signpost only). - Prescribing / medication management.

3. Personas

• Client (self-pay adult, often an expatriate): internationally mobile English-speaking professional living abroad; wants a culturally-compatible, good-fit therapist who understands relocation stress and isolation, in their own timezone, with a transparent price and easy booking.
• Therapist (licensed independent): wants filled calendar, low admin, fair terms, autonomy; may have cross-cultural / expat experience and work across timezones.
• Clinical/Trust-&-Safety admin (Faresay): verifies providers, monitors safety, handles issues.
• Ops/Compliance admin (Faresay): manages market coverage, licensure/registration checks, cross-border permissibility flags, payouts.

4. Key user journeys

1. Client onboarding → match → book → pay → session → follow-up/rebook.
2. Therapist application → verification/credentialing → profile live → receive bookings → get paid out (session fee minus 15%).
3. Safety path: risk signposting surfaced throughout; exclusion at screening for unsuitable presentations; in-session crisis resources (see crisis-safeguarding-policy.md).

5. Functional requirements

5.1 Client-side

• Account creation & secure auth (MFA option); age/eligibility gate ⚠️ COUNSEL (minors policy).
• Intake/preferences: needs, modality, therapist preferences (gender, language, specialism), country-of-residence capture (required for crisis signposting, timezone, and cross-border licensure flagging) ⚠️ COUNSEL.
• Cross-cultural / multilingual preferences: languages spoken, countries/cultures of experience, and expat-relevant specialisms (relocation stress, isolation, identity, belonging) — used as matching inputs (see §5.4).
• Matching/discovery: browse + recommended matches; therapist profiles lead with trust surfaces (verification badges; credentials body + number verified; identity-verified; interviewed; quality-reviewed; reviews; typical response time), then fit (specialisms, languages, cultural experience, price, availability).
• Booking & calendar: timezone-aware scheduling — availability and all times shown in the client's locale, with therapist↔client timezone differences handled explicitly; real-time availability, reminders, reschedule/cancel.
• Payments: pay per session; transparent pricing; the 15% fee (10% founding) handled in the split ⚠️ COUNSEL on how the fee is presented; multi-currency display considerations for overseas clients ⚠️ COUNSEL; receipts; cancellation/no-show rules per ToS.
• Secure video sessions (privacy-compliant telehealth) ⚠️ SECURITY; in-session crisis resources.
• Messaging (async, boundaried, non-emergency) with safety disclaimers.
• Reviews/feedback and outcome measures (optional) per clinical governance.
• Crisis signposting persistently accessible and resolved to the client's country of residence (e.g. 999/111/Samaritans UK; country-correct equivalents elsewhere — must not default to a single UK/US list) ⚠️ verify / ⚠️ COUNSEL.

5.2 Therapist-side

• Application & onboarding; document upload (licence/registration, insurance, ID).
• Credentialing/verification (the trust engine): manual licensure/registration check against the therapist's regulatory body (e.g. BACP/UKCP/HCPC in the UK ⚠️ verify), credentials body + number verified, identity verification, structured interview, quality review, background/DBS, insurance — with ongoing monitoring; verification outcomes drive the client-facing trust badges in §5.1 ⚠️.
• Cross-cultural profile fields: languages spoken, countries/cultures of practice and lived experience, expat-relevant specialisms; therapist's registration jurisdiction captured for cross-border permissibility flagging (see §5.4, §7).
• Profile management; timezone-aware availability/calendar; service/pricing settings (within platform rules).
• Session management: upcoming/past, secure video, notes link-out (clinician owns the record — Faresay does not store the clinical record by default) ⚠️ COUNSEL/CLINICAL.
• Earnings & payouts: balance, payout schedule, statements, tax docs ⚠️.
• Policy acknowledgement: Therapist Agreement, clinical governance, crisis/safeguarding.

5.3 Admin / trust & safety

• Verification queue & audit log; provider suspension/offboarding.
• Market-coverage controls (which client countries / corridors are live for booking) tied to the legal roadmap; UK live first, expat corridors enabled as cross-border permissibility is confirmed (see §7).
• Cross-border permissibility flags: per client-country × therapist-jurisdiction corridor, with ⚠️ COUNSEL review status — block or warn where teletherapy is not confirmed permissible.
• Incident/complaint logging; safeguarding workflow; reporting.
• Payments/refunds/chargeback handling.

5.4 Matching engine

• Trust first: only verified, in-good-standing therapists are eligible to surface; trust state is a gate, not a tie-breaker.
• Fit on top of trust, weighting cross-cultural/multilingual signals: shared/known languages, countries/cultures of experience, expat-relevant specialisms (relocation stress, isolation, identity, belonging), modality and preference fit.
• Timezone feasibility: rank by realistic overlap between the client's locale and the therapist's availability; surface times in the client's timezone.
• Cross-border gating: matches respect the §5.3 permissibility flag for the client-country × therapist-jurisdiction corridor ⚠️ COUNSEL.

6. Non-functional requirements

• Security & privacy (see security-data-protection-policy.md): encryption in transit/at rest, RBAC, MFA, audit logging; data minimisation; PHI/special-category handling.
• Compliance: UK GDPR/DPA 2018 now (see uk-legal-regulatory-brief.md); cross-border data flows for overseas (expat) clients ⚠️ COUNSEL; HIPAA + US state privacy only if/when the US phase is pursued ⚠️ COUNSEL; data-processing agreements (and BAAs where a US footprint applies) with any special-category sub-processor (video, storage, payments-adjacent) ⚠️.
• Reliability/availability: target [PLACEHOLDER: e.g. 99.9%]; resilient booking/video/payments.
• Performance: fast match/search and booking; low-latency video.
• Accessibility: WCAG 2.2 AA target; inclusive design for distressed users.
• Auditability: trace verification, consent, payments, and safety actions.
• Data residency: UK/EU vs US considerations ⚠️ COUNSEL/SECURITY.

7. Cross-border & jurisdiction requirements

7.1 Near-term (UK + expat corridors)

• Cross-border licensure capture: capture the client's country of residence and the therapist's registration/jurisdiction; every match carries this pair.
• Permissibility flag (do not assume): cross-border teletherapy permissibility must be checked per corridor — do not assert it is automatically allowed. Surface a ⚠️ COUNSEL status per client-country × therapist-jurisdiction pair and block/warn where unconfirmed.
• Corridor on/off switches for booking, gated by legal qualification + provider coverage; UK domestic live first, expat corridors enabled as cleared.
• Informed consent to teletherapy captured per corridor ⚠️ COUNSEL.

7.2 Later / optional (US multi-state phase)

Pursued only if/when the US phase is taken on — not the near-term build. - Licensure-by-client-location: a client can only book a therapist licensed (or compact- authorised, e.g. PSYPACT / counseling / social-work compacts) in the client's state at session time. Hard rule ⚠️ COUNSEL. - State on/off switches for booking, gated by legal qualification + provider coverage. - Informed consent to telehealth captured per state ⚠️ COUNSEL. - MSO / friendly-PC structure reflected in contracting/payment flows where required ⚠️ COUNSEL. - HIPAA + 50-state privacy machinery and BAAs ⚠️ COUNSEL/SECURITY.

8. MVP vs later

MVP (UK first, then English-speaking expat corridors): account, intake (incl. country of residence + cross-cultural preferences), trust-first matching, profiles with verification/trust surfaces, timezone-aware booking, payments + 15% split (10% founding), secure video, messaging, manual verification (licence/registration, identity, interview, quality review), country-correct crisis signposting, cross-border permissibility flagging, core admin. Later: advanced matching/ML, outcome analytics, employer/B2B, premium therapist tools, native apps, insurance (if model expands), and the US multi-state phase (§7.2: licensure-by-state, MSO/friendly-PC, PSYPACT/state compacts, HIPAA + 50-state privacy) if pursued.

9. Success metrics

• Liquidity: % of client searches that result in a booking; therapist utilisation.
• Acquisition/economics: CAC, CAC payback, sessions-per-client, retention/churn, LTV (quantified in financial-model.md).
• Quality/safety: client-reported outcomes/satisfaction, complaint/incident rate, verification pass-rate, zero compliance breaches.
• Trust: verification pass-rate, % of profiles with full trust surfaces, median response time.
• Marketplace health: supply/demand balance per live market (UK + expat corridors).

10. Dependencies & open questions

• Payment processor with marketplace split + payouts, international payouts and multi-currency handling, and (where a US footprint applies) BAA ⚠️.
• Privacy-compliant video vendor ⚠️ SECURITY (HIPAA-eligible only required if US phase pursued).
• Licensure/registration-verification / background-check vendor (UK regulatory bodies first).
• Timezone & locale library / source of truth for client-locale time display.
• Country crisis-resource directory to drive country-correct signposting (see crisis-safeguarding-policy.md / uk-crisis-safeguarding-policy.md).
• ⚠️ COUNSEL: minors in scope? fee presentation? clinical-record custody? per-corridor cross-border teletherapy permissibility & consent? (UK basis: uk-legal-regulatory-brief.md.)
• ⚠️ CLINICAL: screening/exclusion thresholds (see clinical-governance & crisis-safeguarding).