Verifying an Alibaba or B2B marketplace supplier: the independent checks

Marketplace badges are not registry checks

"Verified supplier", "Gold supplier", years-on-platform counters, trade assurance: these measure platform behavior, membership tiers, and sometimes a third-party site inspection. They are real signals and worth something. None of them tells you what the public company register says about the legal entity that will take your money, and that is the question that matters once a wire transfer is involved.

Step one: pin down which legal entity you are paying

The storefront brand, the factory, and the entity on the pro-forma invoice are often three different things. Ask in writing for the full legal name, registration number, and country of the company that will invoice you, and the account it is paid to. A serious supplier answers in one email. "Our EU office handles it", with no entity name, is your cue to insist before going further.

If they name a European entity

1. Check the entity in its national register, matching name and number exactly: our guides cover the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and France.
2. Check the connection between the entity and the storefront. Does the marketplace page, the company website's legal notice, or the catalog name that entity? A company formed a few months ago, with one director and no visible link to the brand you have been talking to, should be treated as unrelated until shown otherwise.
3. Validate the VAT number in VIES and check it belongs to the same entity.
4. Compare the bank account country with the entity's country, and give any mismatch, or any later "our details changed" email, the callback treatment.
5. Be careful with "pay our EU account directly to save fees". Moving payment off the platform usually voids its buyer protection while keeping all of the risk. If you leave the platform rails, the registry and bank checks above are all you have, so do them properly.

If the supplier is in China with no European entity

• Chinese companies can be checked in China's National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, but it is Chinese-language and hard to use from abroad. The practical route is to request the business license and have its registration verified, and to commission a third-party factory inspection for any meaningful order.
• Honest scope note: our verification service covers companies registered in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and France, with VAT and sanctions checks across the EU. We do not verify Chinese registrations. For a mainland supplier with no European entity, the platform's own protections plus an inspection service are the right tools; this guide's registry steps apply to whatever European entity appears in the payment chain.

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