How to Verify a Supplier in India Before Wiring Money
A 9-step checklist from a trader who has been on both sides of it.
Before paying any new Indian supplier, verify these 9 things: IEC number with DGFT, GSTIN on the GST portal, B2B presence on IndiaMART/TradeIndia/JustDial, Google Places address match, LinkedIn company page, news mentions for fraud, SSL on their website, matching registered name across sources, and a coherent digital footprint. Missing 3 or more of these is a red flag. The whole process takes about 90 minutes manually, or under 60 seconds with a tool like Vetrade.
Why I wrote this (and why you should actually read it)
In my years running import–export, I've seen two kinds of traders get defrauded: the ones who never verified at all, and the ones who verified wrong — checking one document, feeling satisfied, and wiring the advance.
I've been both at different points. The second one is more painful, because you thought you did the work.
This isn't a theoretical guide. It's the exact checklist I now run before any first-time supplier sees a rupee of my money, organised in the order I actually check things. Some of these checks are free. Some take two minutes. Some take twenty. None of them are optional when the ticket size is more than you're willing to lose.
The real cost of skipping verification
Trade fraud in India rarely shows up in headlines, because most victims don't want it public. The typical pattern is this: a buyer or supplier looks legitimate online, the first small order goes smoothly, trust builds, and on order three or four — usually the biggest one — the goods never ship, or the payment never clears, or what arrives is half of what was invoiced.
Recovery through legal channels exists on paper. In practice, if the other party is in a different state, has already dissolved the registered entity, or is operating on a borrowed GSTIN, you are looking at 18–36 months of legal work to chase money you will probably not see again.
Verification is the cheapest insurance premium in trade. Here is what I check.
The 9-step supplier verification checklist
Step 1 — Verify the IEC (Import Export Code)
The IEC is issued by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) and is mandatory for anyone doing cross-border trade in India. It is a 10-digit code tied to the entity's PAN.
How to check: Go to the DGFT IEC verification portal and enter the IEC. Confirm the company name, address, and status (active vs. suspended).
What to look for:
- Name match — does the IEC-registered name match the name on the supplier's quotation, invoice, and website?
- Address match — same city? Same state? Many frauds involve an IEC registered in one state and a "head office" claimed in another.
- Status — suspended or cancelled IECs are an immediate stop.
Note: An IEC by itself does not make a supplier legitimate. It only confirms the entity is registered for cross-border trade. Treat it as a baseline, not a seal of approval.
Step 2 — Verify the GSTIN
Every GST-registered Indian business has a 15-digit GSTIN. The first two digits are the state code. The GSTIN reveals a lot if you know where to look.
How to check: Enter the GSTIN on the GST portal search. Confirm:
- Legal name of business — matches the IEC and supplier's stated name?
- State code — does the first two-digit prefix match where the supplier claims to operate? A Gujarat supplier with a Delhi-registered GSTIN needs explaining.
- Registration status — active, suspended, or cancelled?
- Nature of business — registered as "manufacturer," "trader," "wholesaler"? Does this match what they are actually selling you?
- Registration date — a GSTIN opened three weeks before they contacted you is not a fatal flag, but it is a strong signal to dig deeper.
Step 3 — Check B2B platform presence
Real Indian suppliers almost always have a footprint on at least one of the major B2B platforms: IndiaMART, TradeIndia, JustDial, and, for exporters, Alibaba.
What to look for:
- Listed on at least two platforms with consistent company name and contact details
- Listing age — a profile created yesterday with "Trusted Member" status purchased the same day is suspicious
- Product categories that actually match what they are quoting you
- Listed phone number matches the one you've been communicating on
Important caveat: Being listed on IndiaMART is not the same as being verified. IndiaMART's "Trust Seal" is a paid badge, not a due-diligence certificate. Use B2B presence as one data point, not the data point.
Step 4 — Google Places address match
Punch the supplier's stated address into Google Maps. Then look for:
- A registered Google Business Profile at that address with the same company name
- Photos of the premises (especially interior — fraudsters rarely invest in fake interior photography)
- Reviews, even negative ones — a real business accumulates reviews over time, good and bad
- Street View imagery of the location — does a factory actually exist there, or is it a residential lane?
If the address resolves to a co-working space, a residential apartment, or does not resolve at all, that's a flag worth investigating — not automatically disqualifying, but worth a direct phone call and a video walk-through request.
Step 5 — LinkedIn company page check
Legitimate businesses have legitimate LinkedIn presence, especially those dealing in international trade.
What to look for:
- Official LinkedIn Company Page with consistent name and address
- Employee count that matches the scale of business being claimed — a supplier claiming ₹50 crore annual turnover with 2 employees on LinkedIn is a mismatch
- Founder or director profiles tagged to the company with history pre-dating the current conversation
- Recent company activity (posts, hires, updates)
A company that exists in every other database but has zero LinkedIn footprint in 2026 is either very small, very offline, or manufactured for the transaction.
Step 6 — News scan for fraud
This is the step most traders skip, and it is the one that has saved me the most money.
Take the company name, the director's name, and the registered address and run three separate Google searches on each, each with the word "fraud", "case", and "complaint" appended.
What you are looking for:
- News articles naming the entity or its directors in fraud, cheating, or non-delivery cases
- Consumer complaint forum entries (Consumer Complaints India, Mouthshut, trade forums)
- Tribunal or court order mentions
Even one credible hit is usually enough to walk away. Fraudsters tend to repeat the same pattern, and a Google News trail that is 18 months old is still predictive.
Step 7 — SSL certificate check on their website
This is a 10-second check. Visit the supplier's website. If the browser shows a padlock (and the URL begins with https://), the site has a valid SSL certificate. If it shows "Not secure," the site either has no certificate or an expired one.
In 2026, any business that handles transactions or even basic enquiry forms has SSL. A company invoicing you for ₹10 lakh but running an insecure website is either operationally negligent or operationally non-existent.
This check is not a deal-breaker on its own — some very old-school traders still run HTTP sites. But combined with other gaps, it's a signal.
Step 8 — Cross-reference everything
Now take the five or six names and addresses you've collected and check that they all match:
- IEC registered name
- GSTIN legal name
- B2B platform listing name
- Google Maps listing name
- LinkedIn page name
- Website "About" page name
Discrepancies are the single strongest fraud signal. A "Sharma Exports Pvt Ltd" on the invoice, "Sharma Enterprises" on IndiaMART, "SE Global" on LinkedIn, and "Sharma Trading Co" on GSTIN is not a branding issue. It is frequently deliberate.
Some gaps are innocent — a proprietorship trading under a brand name, a rebrand in progress. But when you find discrepancies, ask directly, in writing, and expect a clean explanation.
Step 9 — Read the digital silence
The most sophisticated red flag is the one that's easy to miss: coherent silence.
A legitimate 10-year-old trading company has some digital breadcrumb trail — an old news mention, an export data entry, a conference photo, an archived LinkedIn post, a Glassdoor review, a random complaint about their packaging from 2019. Real businesses leave mess behind.
An entity with a perfect, uniform, entirely recent digital footprint — three-month-old LinkedIn, fresh Google profile, brand-new website, sparkling IndiaMART listing, no archive.org history — is too clean.
Fraudsters build in weeks what real businesses accumulate in years. If everything about a supplier was created in the last six months and they're asking for lakhs in advance, walk away or dig ten layers deeper.
A case I almost missed
A few years ago, I was about to wire an advance to a supplier in Surat. Every individual check had passed: IEC was valid, GSTIN was active, they had an IndiaMART listing with good reviews, a website with SSL, a Google Maps pin at a real industrial estate.
The thing that stopped me was step 9 — the digital silence check. Every single one of their assets had been created in a three-week window six months prior. No older news, no older LinkedIn posts, no archive record.
I asked for a video call from their factory. They delayed three days, then produced a call from what was clearly a shared workspace. The trade never happened. Six months later, a textile trader I know got hit by what looked like the exact same pattern — same industrial estate, renamed entity. Total loss: ₹2 lakh.
The verification that saves you is almost never the obvious one. It's the ninth check, after the first eight passed.
The 60-second shortcut
If running nine manual checks on every new supplier sounds like a 90-minute task that you will skip under deadline pressure — you are correct. That is exactly why I eventually built the tool I now use.
Vetrade runs all nine of these checks in parallel and returns a single verification report in under 60 seconds. It pulls from DGFT, GSTN, IndiaMART, TradeIndia, JustDial, Alibaba, Google Places, LinkedIn, news sources, and SSL lookups — the exact same sources I would check manually.
It is not a replacement for judgment. It is a replacement for the time it takes to get the data in front of your judgment. Whether you use Vetrade or run this checklist yourself, the answer is the same: do not wire money to a supplier you have not verified against multiple independent sources.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to verify a supplier in India manually?
Running all 9 checks manually takes roughly 60–90 minutes per supplier, depending on how deep you go on the news scan and cross-referencing steps. Most traders end up rushing or skipping checks under deal pressure — which is exactly when fraud succeeds.
Is an IEC number alone enough to trust a supplier?
No. An IEC only confirms the entity is registered for cross-border trade with DGFT. It says nothing about operational credibility, current financial health, or fraud history. Treat IEC as a baseline requirement, not a trust signal.
What's the difference between IEC and GSTIN verification?
IEC (from DGFT) authorises import–export activity. GSTIN (from GSTN) authorises domestic tax collection and remittance. A legitimate supplier dealing in cross-border trade will have both, and the registered legal name on both should match. Discrepancies here are a serious flag.
Can I rely on IndiaMART "Trusted Seller" badges?
The "Trusted Seller" badge on IndiaMART is a paid verification, not an end-to-end fraud check. It's useful as one data point among many, but it does not replace IEC, GSTIN, and independent news-scan verification.
What's the single biggest red flag for supplier fraud in India?
Coherent digital silence — an entity whose entire online footprint was created in the last 3–6 months, with no older records on archive.org, news, or social platforms. Fraudsters manufacture presence quickly; real businesses accumulate it slowly.
How much can one fraud case cost an Indian importer?
Reported fraud losses in Indian import–export deals typically range from ₹5 lakh to ₹50 lakh per case, with first-time importers disproportionately affected. Large industrial or pharmaceutical imports can reach ₹1 crore or more. Recovery through legal channels takes 18–36 months and is often unsuccessful.
Should exporters verify their buyers too?
Yes. Buyer-side fraud — fake purchase orders, shell GSTINs, and refusal-to-pay patterns — is growing in Indian B2B trade. The same 9-step checklist applies to buyers, with extra emphasis on GSTIN state-code matching and news scanning.
Closing
Verification is not paranoia. It is the single most cost-effective discipline in trade. The ninety minutes you spend running these nine checks is cheaper than every other alternative — lawyers, mediators, insurance, write-offs, emotional capital.
If you want the fast version — all 9 checks in one report, run on the web in under 60 seconds — Vetrade is built for exactly that.
If you want the long version, you now have the checklist.
Either way: don't wire money to a supplier you haven't verified against multiple sources. Not once. Not ever.
For the Semperworks product-centric version of this guide — with manual-vs-automated comparisons and Vetrade's methodology in detail — read the complete 2026 guide on Semperworks.