Verifying a supplier is not one check. It is a sequence, and the order matters, because the early checks are free and rule out the suppliers that are not worth the later ones. Run them cheapest first and you will rarely pay for an audit of a company that was never going to pass.
1. Get the Chinese name and the credit code
Everything else depends on this. A company in mainland China is registered under its Chinese name; the English name on a website or a marketplace storefront is a translation with no legal standing, and several companies can share a similar one.
Ask for a copy of the business licence. It carries the registered Chinese name and an 18-character unified social credit code, which is the identifier you will use for every later check. A real company sends this without hesitation. Reluctance is itself a finding.
2. Look the company up on the official register
China's market regulator runs a public register, the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (gsxt.gov.cn). It is free, in Chinese, and searchable by company name or credit code. Confirm five things:
- The company exists and its status is active.
- The name and code match the licence you were sent.
- The date of establishment. A claim of fifteen years' experience from a company registered last year is worth a question.
- The registered address.
- Whether the record shows administrative penalties, or a listing for abnormal operations — which is what happens when a company misses its filings or cannot be found at its registered address.
Do not over-read registered capital. It is what shareholders have undertaken to contribute, not cash held, and the law gives them years to pay it in. A large figure is not evidence of a large factory.
3. Read the business scope
The register shows the activities the company is registered for. If the scope describes manufacturing your kind of product, the company is at least entitled to make it. If it reads as wholesale, trade or import-export only, you are dealing with a trading company, whatever the website says.
That is not a reason to walk away — a good trading company can be the right partner — but it changes how much room there is on price and who is accountable for a defect. Factory or trading company goes through the signals in detail.
4. Match the bank account to the company
Before any money moves, the beneficiary name on the bank details must match the registered company name. A request to pay a personal account, a company with a different name, or an account in another jurisdiction is the most reliable warning sign in this whole list — including when it arrives mid-order as a "change of bank details". Our payment security policy sets out the fraud pattern and the checks that defeat it.
5. Verify the certificates with whoever issued them
Ask for certificate and test-report numbers and check them at source. Accredited management-system certificates such as ISO 9001 can be looked up on IAF CertSearch; the large testing companies each run a verification page for the reports they have issued.
Check four things: that the document exists, that the company named is the one you are dealing with, that the scope or the product tested is yours, and that it has not expired. A genuine report issued for a different product is far more common than a forged one.
6. Ask for evidence of export, to a market like yours
A company can be real, properly registered and entirely new to exporting. Ask what they have shipped to your market in the past year and for something that evidences it: a redacted bill of lading or packing list, or the standards they tested to for that customer.
Since the end of 2022 there is no general export licence to ask for. Companies no longer file as foreign trade operators, and exporting depends on customs registration and on any controls specific to the product. So "show me your export licence" now proves very little; evidence of actual shipments proves more.
7. Put someone on the floor
Everything above is done from a desk and establishes that a company exists and is what it says. None of it establishes that the factory can make your product. For a first order of any size, the last check is a visit: yours, or an auditor's. What to look at is in our factory audit checklist.
What each check proves, and what it does not
| Check | Cost | Proves | Does not prove |
|---|---|---|---|
| Register lookup and scope (1–3) | Free | The company exists, is in good standing, and what it is registered to do | That it has a factory, or how large |
| Bank account match (4) | Free | That you are paying the company you verified | That the goods will be right |
| Certificate verification (5) | Free | That a document is genuine, and whose it is | That it covers your product, unless the scope says so |
| Export evidence (6) | Free | Experience with your market's requirements | Current capacity or quality |
| Site visit or audit (7) | Paid | That the production line exists and can make your product | What will be in your cartons — that is inspection |
Where this stops working
Desk verification catches the supplier who is not who they say. It does not catch a legitimate factory that ships a batch unlike the sample, lets quality slide on the third order, or presents a test report for a product that was never tested. Those are the failures that cost established importers the most, and they are covered in China supplier scams: which check actually stops which.
If you would rather hand the sequence to someone on the ground, supplier verification is $320 for a supplier you have already found, with the findings in writing.
