Why check a supplier before the first payment?
Because payment fraud between businesses is large and mostly irreversible. The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report records 24,768 business email compromise complaints and $3,046,598,558 lost: payments sent to a fake supplier, or to a real supplier’s hijacked email with new bank details.
The two classic situations: a new supplier you found online or that contacted you, and an existing supplier that suddenly “changed banks”. They need different checks.
Fake company names: the borrowed identity
A fraudulent supplier rarely invents a company. It borrows a real one: the name, registration number and address of a registered business, placed on a new website and an invoice. A search of the name finds a real entry, and that is the trap.
- The register entry’s address differs from the one on the invoice or the site.
- The company in the register is closed, dissolved or struck off.
- The company is decades old; its website domain is a few weeks old.
- The bank account holder’s name differs from the company name, or the account is in another country.
- The email domain is a free mailbox or a look-alike of the company’s real domain.
Our Business Check makes the comparison for you: a registry entry is confirmed only when it matches the site, and a namesake without a proven link is shown as a possible match with fewer points. A closed company costs 30 points.
Company registries and the LEI: what each tells you
| Source | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Annuaire des entreprises (France) | SIREN/SIRET, status, creation date, activity, address, directors |
| Companies House (UK) | Company number, status, incorporation date, address, officers |
| SEC EDGAR (US public companies) | Listed companies and their filings; private US companies are in state registers instead |
| GLEIF (LEI, any country) | Legal name, country, status and registered address of any entity with a Legal Entity Identifier |
| Wikidata | For known organisations: country, parent company, listing and leaders |
For Germany, Turkey, the Gulf states, Israel or Canada, there is no free register we can query in this version: the identifiers printed on the site (HRB, MERSİS, CR, trade licence) are shown as found and marked not verified. Our team can follow them up by hand on the Business plan.
Business Check · Free preview
Check a supplier: registry match, people, legal notice, domain age and reputation, each with its source.
A supplier changes its bank details: what to do
- 01Do not reply to the email that announced the change, and do not call the number in it.
- 02Call your usual contact on a number from your records or the supplier’s official website.
- 03Ask for the change in writing from a known address and check that the account holder’s name is the company’s.
- 04Hold the payment until both checks agree. Make two people approve any first payment to a new account.
Invoices and contracts arrive as PDF or Word files. When a document looks generated or edited, the AI document detector reads its text, images and metadata page by page; a modification date earlier than the creation date, for example, is a signal worth a question.
A voice call from a “director” confirming the new account can be a cloned voice: see the AI voice and deepfake scams guide.
What a supplier check does not replace
The Business Check reads public signals. It does not assess solvency, read accounts or court records, check sanctions lists or replace a KYC provider. For a large contract, add those checks; for a first order or an unknown company found online, it is a fast first filter with every source linked.
Any free account can run a Business Check (3 credits, out of 10 free credits a month) and see how many checks ran and how many warning signs came up. The full report, with the score, the company, the people and every source, is on the Business plan ($49 a month), with a manual review by our team within 48 hours when the AI cannot confirm everything.
The company check page lists every registry rule. For software vendors, the SaaS reliability checker looks at customers, documentation and security claims instead.
Frequently asked questions
How do I verify that a company is real?
Find it in the official register of its country and check that the entry is active and matches the website, the address and the identifier on its documents. The Business Check does this for France, the UK, US public companies and any entity with an LEI, with a link to each entry.
What is a fake company name scam?
A scam that uses the name and registration details of a real company on a new website, invoice or email, so that a quick search finds a genuine entry. The gaps are in the details: a different address, a closed company, a young domain or a bank account in another name.
What is an LEI and why does it help?
A Legal Entity Identifier is a 20-character code for legal entities that take part in financial transactions, recorded in the global GLEIF database with the legal name, country and registered address. When a supplier has one, it is a reliable way to confirm its identity in any country.
Can you check a supplier in Germany or the UAE?
Partly. We have no free register to query there in this version, so the identifiers printed on the site are shown as not verified, alongside the LEI search, the domain, the people and the reputation checks. On the Business plan, our team can complete the check by hand.