It is harder to build trust when you don't see and hear the other party. I totally get that and its fair honestly, a lot depends on facial and verbal cues. So I assume someone in my shoes would have to make extra sure to build trust by being responsive and delivering reliably.

It would probably also be beneficial to have some kind of proof that the work I claim to do currently is actually done, maybe invite the other party to the git repos or something. So if they wanted to, they could check on the status any time. I guess that might reduce some uncertainty.