How do I check that a foreign buyer is real before I quote or ship?

1. Ask for details in writing. Ask for the registered company name, the company number, the VAT number (for buyers in the United Kingdom or the EU), the registered address, the delivery address, the product, the quantity and the current supplier. A standard New Buyer Questionnaire works well, and trade.gov notes that scammers will generally not take the time to fill one out. If the buyer gives only a trading name, ask for the registered name. If the buyer will not give a registered name and number, do not quote until it does. Screen both names.
2. Check the company register for the buyer's country (sections below).
3. Check the VAT number, for buyers in the United Kingdom or the EU.
4. Confirm the sender. Call the company and ask for the person who wrote to you. Use a number from the company's own website, which you open by searching its registered name, not by clicking a link in the email. If you find no public number, the switchboard does not know the person, or nobody will confirm the enquiry, treat the sender as unverified. A register entry shows the company is registered. It does not show that the person writing to you works there.
5. Screen the name on the Consolidated Screening List.
6. Look for the company in import records for the product it is asking about.

Record each result on its own: company registered, sender confirmed, VAT valid, product history found. One unconfirmed result does not cancel the others, and one pass does not prove the others.

• Search Companies House. Go to find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk and search by name or number. GOV.UK lists what you get free: registered address, date of incorporation, current and resigned officers, document images, mortgage charge data, previous company names and insolvency information. The site also has a dissolved company search.
• What the record shows. A record shows what was filed. The register states that Companies House does not check the accuracy of the information filed.
• What a bad answer looks like. Any of these is a bad answer. There is no match for the name or the number. The company appears only in the dissolved company search. It was incorporated a few months ago, but the email describes many years of trading. There is insolvency information. The name changed recently. The person who signs as director is not among the current officers.
• Set a free alert. Companies House will email you when the company updates its details, for example a change of director or address. Follow the buyer before the first order. Keep the alert on while the buyer owes you money.
• Check the VAT number on GOV.UK. The GOV.UK VAT number check service confirms whether the number is valid. It also shows the name and address of the business the number is registered to. You need the number itself, because you cannot search by company name. An invalid number is a bad answer. So is a name and address that do not match Companies House and the email signature.

For a buyer in an EU member state, check its VAT number with the VIES tool. You can reach it from the Your Europe page Check a VAT number (VIES). VIES is a search engine owned by the European Commission. It reads the national VAT databases at the moment you search.

There are only two results: valid (EU VAT information exists) or invalid (it does not). The page gives three reasons for an invalid result. The first is that the number does not exist. The second is that the number has not been activated for intra-EU transactions. In plain words, the company is registered for VAT at home but not yet for trade with other EU countries, because some EU countries require a separate registration for this. The third is that the registration is not yet finalised. The page adds that changes do not always appear in the national databases immediately.

If the result does not show who owns the number: national authorities will not give out the name and address for a VAT number, because of data protection. They confirm only whether a name and address you supply is associated with the number. The simplest route is to ask the buyer to get this confirmation from its own tax office and send it to you. The page also describes a direct request to national authorities, but that route is written for EU businesses. The page does not say whether a requester outside the EU can use it, and the method differs by country (see the FAQ).

What to do with an invalid result: do not treat it as proof of fraud. The page says a customer whose number does not verify can ask its own tax office to check it, and may need an extra registration for cross-border trade. Ask the buyer for that result in the same way. Until VIES shows the number as valid, record the VAT status as unconfirmed. Judge company existence and sender identity separately, with the registry check and the callback. If you get an error message instead of a result, the national database may be down for back-up. Wait a few minutes and try again.

VIES checks a VAT registration, not the company register. To check the company itself, use OpenCorporates (next section). Its coverage includes Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland and Belgium.

A company in the United States is formed in one state, so its record sits in that state's registry. The Delaware Division of Corporations entity search is one example. Its free record shows the entity name, file number, incorporation or formation date, registered agent name, address, phone number and residency. The search page itself warns about how to read a result:

So a result shows the company was formed. It does not show that it is active today. Delaware sells a Certificate of Status for a fee.

• OpenCorporates, when you do not know which registry to open. OpenCorporates combines company records from over 140 government registries and other official sources. Its jurisdiction list covers all 50 states of the United States and the District of Columbia. If a buyer in the United States has not told you its state, search its name here first. OpenCorporates also covers the United Kingdom, Germany, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, with Abu Dhabi and Dubai listed separately. A bad answer is no record in the country the buyer claims, or a record with a different address or different officers.
• If the buyer's country is not covered. OpenCorporates does not list every country. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman are examples. The LEI search, the screening list and import records do not replace a registry check. Ask the buyer for its commercial registration certificate and number. Then confirm the certificate with the authority that issued it, using contact details you find yourself, not the ones printed on the document. Until that authority confirms it, record the buyer's existence as unconfirmed.
• GLEIF LEI search, when the buyer claims a parent group. The GLEIF LEI search is free and needs no registration. A company with a Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) reports its 'direct and ultimate accounting consolidating parent': its direct parent and the top company of its group. A parent's LEI appears only if the parent has one too. Check that the record names the group the buyer claims. A company without an LEI returns no result, which is not a warning by itself.
• Consolidated Screening List, for every buyer. Search the buyer's name on the Consolidated Screening List. It combines the restricted-party lists of the United States Departments of Commerce, State and the Treasury, and it is updated every day. A match means the United States government maintains restrictions on certain exports to that party. The search is free, and its fuzzy name mode helps with names translated from non-Latin alphabets. If you get a match, trade.gov says to do more due diligence before you go ahead, and to check the official list of the agency that named the party.

Import records can support a buyer's claimed purchase history. They cannot show that a company buying a product for the first time is not genuine. Use the source that exists for the buyer's country:

• United Kingdom: a public trader search. The steps are in how to find importers in the United Kingdom.
• United States: bill of lading data. See customs and bill of lading data explained for what it shows.
• Any tracked market: Reevi's importer pages count the companies that import one product into one country. They show counts without company names. Use them to judge the size of the buyer pool.

Read the record type before the count. The furniture and bed linen counts come from import records that the United States and the United Kingdom collect themselves. The turmeric count for Germany is mirror data: it comes from the export records of the countries that ship turmeric to Germany, such as India. A German company appears only if a supplying country's records name it. Coverage is therefore partial, and a company that is missing needs more checking.

When the buyer is missing from the records, ask which supplier ships to it today, through which port, and whether it buys through an import agent. A first-time buyer may have no current supplier or shipment history. Record its explanation, and rely on the registry check and the callback for identity.

Check a Lead puts several of these checks into one report on a named company. The basic report is free, and a free account includes about 5 buyer reports a month. The report covers:

• Identity and ownership: registry data, ultimate beneficial owners, and sanctions and PEP (politically exposed person) screening.
• Buy potential: what the company buys, where its goods ship from, the scale of its recent activity, and how it fits your category.
• Risk and compliance: adverse media, lawsuits, bankruptcy filings, country-level risk and credit signals.

Signing in gives the full report. Monitoring on named buyers is available on paid plans; see the pricing page. The report does not replace the sender callback or your payment terms.