Updated 16 Oct 2026
How we check every holder.
A buyer licensing records needs to know they came from the company that holds them. So before we countersign, approach a buyer or agree a licence, we check the company that holds the records, the person who signs for it, and the records themselves. The checks run by themselves, each keeps its evidence with its source and date, and a step stays closed until the checks it needs have passed.
What we check
- 1
The company exists and is active
Its registration number is looked up in the official register (name, status, legal form, address, date of incorporation, officers). Where the register has no free lookup, the holder adds the register's own extract and we read it, then cross-check it against what is public.
- 2
The signer can bind it
The signer is listed in the register as a director, partner or member, or a listed officer has authorised them in writing (a board resolution or power of attorney the holder adds).
- 3
The signer is who they say they are
The signer signs in with a verified address at the company's own domain, or confirms a link sent to one; failing that, the person behind their address is looked up and must be the named signer at this company.
- 4
The brand belongs to that company
The holder says how the brand relates to the company (the same name, a trading name, or a separate company). We read the brand's own site and terms for the company's name, number and address, the domain's registration, and what the records themselves name.
- 5
The records name the holder
When the holder measures its exports, the reader on their computer also picks out who the records belong to: the mailbox's own domain and the issuer and buyer named on its e-invoices. Only those names reach us, with counts. They must be the signing company or the brand it declared.
- 6
The dates line up
The records cannot start before the company existed, unless a document shows they passed to it (a conversion, a transfer of the business or an asset purchase).
- 7
Who owns it is known
Everyone holding 25% or more, from the register where it publishes owners, otherwise as the holder states them; each is screened like the company.
- 8
No one is on a sanctions list
The company, the brand, the signer, the officers, the beneficial owners and any introducer are screened against the United States consolidated list (OFAC and the export lists), the UN Security Council list, the UK sanctions list and the EU consolidated list, refreshed every day.
- 9
It is not in an embargoed country
The company's country, and its owners', against the countries and regions under comprehensive sanctions and the countries the US rule on sensitive personal data names.
- 10
Nothing adverse in the news or the courts
A search of news, court and regulator records for the company, the brand and the signer: fraud, litigation over data or contracts, insolvency, data breaches, regulatory action.
What each step needs
Countersigning the NDA
The company's record, the signer's authority, the signer's identity, sanctions screening and the country.
Countersigning the mandate
The company's record, the signer's authority, the signer's identity, sanctions screening, the country, the brand, the beneficial owners and the public record.
Approaching buyers
The company's record, the signer's authority, the signer's identity, sanctions screening, the country, the brand, the beneficial owners, the public record and whose records they are.
Agreeing a licence
The company's record, the signer's authority, the signer's identity, sanctions screening, the country, the brand, the beneficial owners, the public record, whose records they are and the dates.
Sanctions screening runs again every day on every company with an agreement, and every other check runs again before a step when its evidence is no longer recent.
Where the evidence comes from
We read the official register ourselves wherever it publishes a free service: Companies House, Registre national des entreprises (INSEE Sirene), Brønnøysund Register Centre, Finnish Patent and Registration Office (YTJ), ARES (Czech business register) and ACRA (Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority), plus GLEIF for a Legal Entity Identifier and the EU's VIES for a VAT number.
Where a register has no free lookup (Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia (SSM), The Secretary of State of the state of formation, Handelsregister, Kamer van Koophandel (KVK), Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), ASIC and Corporations Canada or the provincial registry, and others), the holder adds the register's own extract. We read it for its facts, keep those and a fingerprint of the file, and never keep the file itself.
Screening covers the company, its brand, the signer, the officers, the beneficial owners and any introducer, against the US Consolidated Screening List, the UN Security Council Consolidated List, the UK Sanctions List and the EU Consolidated Financial Sanctions List, each read from its publisher every day.
What reaches us from the records
The records stay on the holder's computer: their browser measures them and sends counts. For this check it also sends who the records name as their own: the domains the mailbox writes from and to, and the companies named as issuer and buyer on its e-invoices, the few most frequent of each with how often they appear. A name that reads as a person's is dropped on the holder's computer and never sent.
Those names have to be the company that signs, or the brand it declared. Records that name another company as theirs are not ours to sell, whoever offers them.