You’re right, I should have been clearer here - apologies!
When we refer to a ‘soft’ credit check and say this doesn’t leave a digital footprint, what we mean is that these kinds of searches don’t impact your ability to obtain other credit in the same way that a ‘hard’ credit check could; other companies checking your credit file to make credit decisions won’t see this ‘soft’ check we’ve run. We’re not running a credit check in order to make a credit decision, rather, we’re running it for identity and verification purposes. Every ‘hard’ credit check you go through is fully visible on your credit file, and other companies performing searches on your file will see these; generally it’s advised not to have too many ‘hard’ searches on your file in a short space of time, as lenders can view this negatively.
Hope that helps clear things up!