How to Automate International Business Verification
There is no global company register, so international business verification cannot be a single lookup. It has to be done country by country: get the registration number the business’s home country actually uses, check that the number has a valid format for that country, confirm it against the official national registry, and decide in advance what happens when the answer is not a clean match. Automating it means putting those steps behind one interface, so the system handling a seller from Brazil and a supplier from Nigeria follows the same process, even though the registries behind them have nothing in common.
Why there is no single check
Every country keeps its own register of companies, under its own law. Registers differ in what identifier they issue, what they publish, the language they use and how they can be queried. Some offer a modern API, some a search page, some only paid extracts. Even within the European Union, each member state runs its own register, with its own numbers and rules.
A team verifying businesses in three countries can learn three registers. A marketplace onboarding sellers from thirty cannot, which is why the work ends up either automated or done badly.
Verified and unverified sellers on a cross-border platform
On a platform that only checks an email address and a payout account, a seller registered abroad is whoever they say they are. The buyer cannot tell a registered company from a name chosen yesterday, and neither can the platform when a dispute, a chargeback or a tax authority’s request arrives. Verifying a business seller against its national registry changes three things: the platform knows the seller is a real legal entity, it holds the registration number and legal name it can be held to, and it can show a regulator or a payment partner which official source it checked and when. The cost is one extra field at sign-up.
Step 1: collect the identifier the country actually uses
The input that matters is the company’s registration number in its country of incorporation, together with that country and the company’s legal name. The identifier differs everywhere: a company number in the United Kingdom, a CNPJ in Brazil, a corporate identification number in India. In the United States there is no national register at all; companies are registered by state.
Asking for “company number” in a single free-text field invites the wrong number: a VAT or tax number, a trading licence, a branch number. The onboarding form should name the identifier expected for the country the business selects.
Step 2: check the format before the lookup
Each registry’s numbers have a defined length and structure, and many include a check digit that catches a mistyped or transposed character. A number that fails this test cannot belong to any company in that country, so there is no point querying the registry with it. Rejecting it at entry, with a message saying what was wrong, lets the person fix it while they are still on the form.
Format checking is cheap and immediate. It does not prove the company exists, only that the number could be real.
Step 3: confirm against the official registry
The registry answers what the format cannot: whether a company with this number exists, whether its registered name matches the name given, and whether it is active, or dissolved, struck off or in liquidation. The answer is only as good as the source, which is why it should come from the national registry itself rather than from a copy that may be weeks or months old.
Step 4: decide what to do with each answer
Most checks come back clean. The ones that do not need a rule written before launch, not a judgement made case by case:
A number that is not found usually means a typo or the wrong identifier, so send it back to the business. A name that does not match may be a trading name, a translation or an old name, which calls for a closer look rather than an automatic rejection. A company that is not active should not be onboarded or paid. And when a registry is temporarily unavailable, the check should be queued and retried, not passed by default.
Step 5: check again later
Registration status changes. A business that was active when it signed up can be dissolved six months later and keep trading on a platform that never looked again. Re-checking before first payout and on a regular schedule catches it.
Where coverage stops
No service covers every country, and coverage differs between countries even within one service, from a format check only to a full registry check. Before relying on any provider, check the jurisdictions you need against its published list, and ask how it handles countries it does not cover. For Global Biz Verify API, the current list is on the coverage page, including which registries are enabled on request.
Where this leaves a marketplace expanding abroad
Each new country adds a registry, an identifier and a set of edge cases, but it should not add a new process. Ask for the right number for each country, check its format at entry, confirm it against the official registry, apply the same rules to the answer and check again before money moves. Why the official registry matters as the source is covered in why direct registry access matters, and how the checks fit marketplace and supply chain onboarding in automated business registration verification for e-commerce, marketplaces and supply chains.
Open Automation’s Global Biz Verify API checks company registration numbers against the official business registry in 40 jurisdictions, with format and checksum validation on the number, and is available on AWS Marketplace. Learn more at open-automation.io/global-biz-verify-api.