How to verify a Chinese supplier before you pay a deposit
On this page
Before paying a deposit, establish who the seller is, who will receive the money, and how those parties relate to the manufacturer. Different names may reflect translations or separate entities. Neither a difference nor an apparent match is enough, by itself, to establish that a payment is safe.
The English name on a website, the name on a quotation, the name on a set of bank details and the name on a business licence can all be different strings. Some of those differences are translations of one entity; some are separate entities. Verification is the work of finding out which legal entity sits behind each document, whether the documents describe the same entity, and where they do not, what the relationship between the entities is.
This guide sets out five steps. You do not need to read Chinese to start, but the official registry is in Chinese and requires real-name identity verification to search, so Step 2 will usually need someone who can read the records to do the lookup for you. Each step produces either a confirmed fact or an open item. Open items are not a reason to walk away; they are the list of what to ask for next, and the reason to hold the payment until they are closed.
Step 1: Obtain the current business licence and entity details
Registered enterprises in mainland China hold a business licence (营业执照) issued by the local market regulation authority. Ask the supplier for a clear, complete, current image, with the QR code visible. Licences are reissued when the registered name, legal representative, address or registered capital changes, so an older copy may describe an entity that no longer looks the same.
From the licence, record three things: the Chinese registered name, the 18-character Unified Social Credit Code (USCC, 统一社会信用代码), and the name of the legal representative. These are the identifiers you will match everything else against. The guide on reading a Chinese business licence explains each field.
Do not draw conclusions from how quickly the licence arrives, or from a supplier’s reluctance to send one. Agree a reasonable time, and treat what you receive as a starting point. Anyone can produce an image file; a genuine licence issued by the registration authority reflects the registered particulars at the time it was issued, and an unverified image proves less than that. If the supplier sends a licence for a different company “in the same group”, note it, and keep the question of which entity is selling to you open.
Step 2: Search the official registry and check the USCC
The record to check is the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (GSXT), the official registry. It is in Chinese and, since 2021, requires real-name identity verification to search, so most overseas buyers cannot complete the lookup themselves. Have someone who can read the records do it for you: a colleague or agent in China, a sourcing partner, or a paid verification service. Ask them to search by the Chinese name or USCC, compare the current registration details, status and recorded changes with the documents you received, review available risk notices, and give you the source and lookup date. Distinguish official registration information from company-submitted disclosures. If the lookup cannot be completed or interpreted, leave that check unresolved.
This step is the one that turns a document into a check. The licence tells you what the supplier says it is; the registry tells you what is on record today. Name changes, a change of legal representative, a change of address and status changes such as revocation all appear as recorded changes, and each is worth reading against the supplier’s own account of its history. A lookup that fails, returns no record, or returns a record you cannot interpret is an unresolved item, not a pass.
The USCC itself can be examined in two limited ways. It has an internal structure and a check character, so a mistyped code can often be caught, and the code encodes the registering authority, a category of entity and the administrative division where it was registered. Three limits apply. The code is issued to legal persons and to other organisations, so holding one does not mean the holder is an independent legal person. The code does not change when an entity relocates, so a mismatch between the region in the code and the current address may simply reflect an earlier registration location; check the change records rather than treating it as a contradiction. And a structurally valid code is not evidence that the entity exists or is active, since a check character can be computed by anyone; only the registry lookup answers that. Our free credit code checker performs the structural check and decodes the region and category; it does not query the registry.
Step 3: Match the contract seller and the signing authority
For a mainland enterprise, the Chinese registered name is the primary identifier. The English name on a website, email signature or quotation is a translation or trading name; it is not what the mainland registry records, although an English name may appear in other records such as bank documents. Two unrelated entities can use the same English rendering, and one entity can use several.
Take the Chinese name from the licence and look for it on the quotation, proforma invoice and contract, usually in a header, footer or the company seal. If a document carries only an English name, ask for it to be reissued with the full Chinese registered name and the USCC.
When the Chinese name on the contract differs from the licence, do not conclude immediately that you are dealing with two entities. A one-character difference may be a rename, an older document or a typing error; it may also be a different entity. Check the USCC and the registry’s name-change records before deciding which it is, and ask for the licence of whichever entity is actually named as seller.
Then look at who signs. The legal representative has a specific statutory role. Other people may also bind the company through their authority or applicable agency rules; a signature or seal alone does not settle that question. Ask for evidence of authority appropriate to the transaction, such as an authorisation letter naming the signatory and the scope, and confirm it independently with the company through a contact channel you established before the document arrived.
Step 4: Check the payee, its authority and the bank instructions
The beneficiary is the named payment recipient; it is not necessarily the contractual seller. Identify each party’s role and obtain authenticated instructions from the seller explaining any third-party payment. Confirm payment details through a trusted, independently established channel, especially after any change. Evidence of a corporate relationship alone does not establish authority to collect this payment.
Compare the beneficiary name on the bank details with the registered name of the seller. Where they match, you still want the bank details to be written into the contract or proforma invoice, not only in an email, and to have been confirmed by a channel other than the message that delivered them. A message from the supplier’s usual email address is not a second channel; mailboxes can be taken over.
Where they differ, first check whether the difference is only a translation or spelling variant. Before treating a beneficiary as a third party, establish how the account name in the bank’s records corresponds to the registered entity; an English account name and a Chinese registered name are not automatically two different parties.
Where the beneficiary is genuinely a different entity, identify what it is. It may be a Hong Kong or other trading entity that is itself the seller, a trading company or export-service company acting under an arrangement with the factory, an individual, or a party with no explained connection. Each of these calls for different documents, covered in the separate guides on beneficiary mismatches and Hong Kong receiving companies. In every case the questions are the same: what is this entity’s role in this order, has the seller authorised payment to it in a document you can authenticate, and does the contract say that paying it discharges your obligation?
A registry search does not verify a bank account. Ask your bank what beneficiary or account-verification checks are available for the proposed transfer, and independently authenticate any bank document supplied by the seller. These checks may have limits.
Step 5: Record what is unresolved and decide whether to pause
At the end of the first four steps you will have a list of confirmed facts and a list of unresolved items. Write both down, with the source and date of each check. Typical unresolved items are:
- The registry lookup could not be completed or interpreted, so the licence has only been read, not checked.
- The contract carries an English name only.
- The bank details arrived by email and are not in the contract.
- The person signing is not the legal representative, and no evidence of authority has been shown.
- The relationship between the seller and a third-party beneficiary is asserted but not documented.
Some of these can be closed by a document from the supplier. Others need independent confirmation, an explanation you can test, or a check by someone who can read the record. Not every gap has a document that closes it, and a set of documents that agree with each other can still be wrong together. The guide on documents to request before paying a deposit sets out what each document can and cannot show.
The decision at the end is not “safe” or “unsafe”. It is whether the unresolved items are ones you are prepared to pay with open, and whether the supplier’s response to being asked has changed the picture. A refusal, a long unexplained delay, or a change of bank details after you started asking are each a reason to pause until the item is resolved.
What this guide does not cover
This guide covers identity: which legal entity you are dealing with, whether your documents describe the same one, and whether the party being paid has explained authority to receive the money. It does not cover whether the factory can make your product to specification or deliver on time, and it does not confirm who controls a bank account; a document check cannot do that. It does not cover the authority of an individual salesperson beyond the evidence described above, and it is not legal advice on contract enforceability in China. Completing all five steps reduces the chance that you are paying an entity you have not identified; it does not establish that the transaction is safe.
If you would rather have these steps done for you against the registry record, with unresolved items reported as unresolved, you can start a verification with the documents you already have.