How do I verify a Chinese supplier before wiring money?

The wire is the point of no return. Before that transfer clears, you have leverage, options, and a supplier who is on their best behaviour. After it clears — especially on a personal account — you have a chat window that may or may not get answered. So the whole game is front-loading your checks into the window before money moves.

Here is the part nobody tells first-time importers: you can do most of this yourself. You do not need to be in China, and you do not need to speak Chinese to run the first four checks. We've walked enough factory floors to know exactly where the self-service routine works — and where it quietly hits a wall. We'll be honest about both.

The pre-wire routine you can run from abroad

Run these in order. Each one is cheap, and each one knocks out a different category of bad supplier. If a supplier resists any of them, that resistance is your answer.

1. Get the business license and read what it actually says

Ask for a photo of their business license (营业执照). A real supplier sends it without drama. Then check three things on it: the registered company name matches the entity you'd be paying, the registered address is real, and the scope of business (经营范围) actually mentions manufacturing or trading the thing you're buying. A license that says "import-export trade" on a supplier swearing they own the factory is a flag, not a footnote.

The catch: the license is in Chinese, the registration number ties back to a government database (国家企业信用信息公示系统) most overseas buyers have never heard of, and "the address exists on a map" is not the same as "a factory stands on it." More on that wall below.

2. Corporate account, never personal

This is the single hardest line in the whole routine. Payment goes to a corporate bank account whose name matches the business license — full stop. The moment a supplier asks you to wire to a personal account, a Hong Kong shell with a mismatched name, Western Union, or crypto, you stop. Nine times out of ten the "shell factory" scam — professional website, Gold Supplier badge, responsive sales rep, then silence after the wire — turns on exactly this ask. Money sent to a personal account is, for practical purposes, gone. There is nobody to claw it back from.

3. Operating history — at least three years

A factory that has shipped for three years has a paper trail: a registration date, customs records, returning clients. A shell spun up six weeks ago has a beautiful website and nothing behind it. Check the registration date on the license against how long they claim to have been "a leading manufacturer since 2009." Under two years of real operation, paired with pricing that sits 40–50% under everyone else and a "this price expires tomorrow" push, is the classic shell signature.

4. Get on a live video walk — not a slide deck

Insist on a live, unscripted video call walking the production floor — not a folder of photos, not a pre-recorded tour. Ask them to walk to the front gate and show the company name on the building. Ask them to pan across the line that would run your order. Ask a technical question about your product and watch whether the person answering actually knows the process or has to mute and ask someone. "The factory is being renovated" is the oldest dodge in the book; treat it as a no.

To go deeper on telling a real manufacturer from a trading company reselling three factories under one logo, read is this a real factory or a trading company →.

5. Two Western-client references — and actually call them

Ask for two references from clients in your market, then follow up. Most buyers ask and never call. The references that matter are the ones who'll tell you what the supplier was like when something went wrong — a late batch, a quality dip, a dispute. A supplier who can't produce a single overseas reference after "ten years in export" is telling you something.

6. De-risk the first deal itself

Even after the checks pass, structure the first transaction so a bad outcome can't sink you:

• Place a small trial order first ($1,000–$3,000) before any volume commitment. It's the cheapest verification you'll ever buy.
• Use escrow for the first deal. Alibaba Trade Assurance or PayPal hold the money until you confirm — your risk on a first order drops sharply versus a raw wire.
• Never wire 100% upfront to a new supplier. Industry-standard terms are 30% deposit, 70% before shipment; push for 70% after your inspection passes, so the balance is leverage, not a leap of faith. 100% upfront is only ever reasonable on orders under about $3,000.

Where the self-check hits a wall

Run all six and you've filtered out most of the obvious frauds. We'd genuinely rather you do this than skip it. But there are three checks where doing it from another country runs out of road — and these three are exactly where the money usually gets lost.

Reading the license. Anyone can send a license photo. Knowing whether it's current, whether the registered capital and scope line up with the claims, and whether the entity has been flagged or has abnormal-operations marks against it means reading Chinese government registration data — not the PDF they hand you. A doctored or borrowed license passes a glance and fails a cross-check.

Cross-referencing registration against customs trade data. A license tells you a company exists. Customs records tell you whether it has actually exported your product category, to where, and in what volume. That's the difference between "registered as a manufacturer" and "has shipped 200 containers of exactly this to the US." You can't pull that from abroad with a Chrome translate plug-in.

Standing on the actual floor. A video walk can be staged — borrowed premises, a neighbour's line, a sample room dressed up as a factory. The only thing that fully closes the gap is someone physically on site, matching the building to the license, counting the lines, checking the address is a factory and not a residential unit or an empty office.

Where Rich Bee comes in — before a cent moves

This is the gap we close, and we're specific about how. Before you wire anything, we run the verification that the desk routine can't:

• An on-the-ground or live video factory audit — our founder or a partner goes to the address, not an outsourced stranger, and matches what's on the floor to what's on the license.
• A business-license and customs-data cross-check — we read the Chinese registration, confirm the entity is real and active, and pull trade history to see what they've genuinely shipped.
• For quality once you're committed, we'll scope and coordinate independent third-party inspection (vetted options such as SGS, QIMA, or V-Trust) — but you commission and pay the inspector directly. We have no in-house inspection team and we never mark that fee up.

One thing we are careful to be clear about: Rich Bee is the coordinator and on-the-ground team, not a guarantor. We don't hold your money, we don't take a cut from the factory, and there are no factory commissions on our side — we charge you a transparent service fee, so our only incentive is getting the verification right. See how we verify a supplier →

If you're sourcing for Amazon FBA specifically — where a bad supplier can torch a listing, not just an order — the calculus shifts further toward verifying before you commit. We get into that in do I need a sourcing agent for Amazon FBA →.

Start with a free check

Not ready for a full sourcing engagement? Hand us the supplier you're eyeing — name, Alibaba link, or the license they sent — and our advisor will run a first-pass check on the business license, pull what trade history we can, and flag the obvious risks. No form, no commitment, and we get back to you based on typical turnaround for a basic check. It costs you nothing, and it might save you a wire you'd never see again.

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Part of our China Sourcing 101 guide →