How to Check If a Philippine Company Is Actually Registered: SEC Verification, Fake Permits, and Pre-Payment Due Diligence

What Three Minutes Buys You, and What Costs Money

Free and instant, you can confirm exactly three things: whether the entity is on the register, its registration number, and its current status. Everything below that — shareholders, paid-up capital, directors, registered address, financials — lives in filed documents you must order and pay for, usually a small per-document fee with a few working days' turnaround.

Match your effort to your exposure:

• Three minutes, free: name and status search, plus a digit-by-digit check of the registration number. Do this before the conversation gets anywhere near money.
• Three days, small fee: order the General Information Sheet (GIS) and Audited Financial Statements (AFS). These tell you who actually owns the company, how much capital was really paid in, and whether it booked revenue last year. Do this before signing or paying a deposit.
• Three weeks, professionals: a local lawyer runs litigation and encumbrance searches, an accountant reviews the books, and someone physically visits the office, warehouse, and production line. Do this for joint ventures, acquisitions, exclusive distribution, or large prepayments.

The deciding question is simple: can you afford to lose the amount you are about to send? The three-minute check will not stop a determined fraudster, but it filters out the majority of improvised ones — and the document fees at the three-day tier are routinely the highest-return money you will spend on the whole deal.

SEC Company Registration Number Lookup: Two Different Doors

Corporations and partnerships in the Philippines register with the SEC at sec.gov.ph, and the public search and the document-ordering service are separate systems. The SEC has renamed and redesigned its online platforms several times in recent years, so check the SEC website for the current entry points. The two functions, however, have been constant.

Door one: name search (free)

This answers "does this company exist." Practical rules:

• Search the English registered name, not the Chinese name, the brand, or an abbreviation. Philippine corporate names usually carry a suffix — Inc., Corp., Corporation, Trading, Enterprises — and dropping it can return nothing. The "XYZ Group" your contact refers to verbally may not be a registered name at all.
• Enter only the most distinctive word first and let the system return partial matches. Typing a full name with one word off is the most common cause of a false "no such company" conclusion.
• Compare the registration number digit by digit. Number formats have changed over the years — older records carry letter prefixes, newer ones use a different scheme — so you cannot judge authenticity by whether a number "looks right." Only a match counts.

Door two: ordering filed documents (paid)

This answers "what is inside the company." Commonly available filings include the Articles of Incorporation, By-Laws, GIS, AFS, and certificates confirming corporate standing. Documents carry a per-copy fee and a few days of processing.

This is the highest-value step in the whole exercise. The Articles tell you what business the company was authorized to do and whether foreign equity is capped; the GIS tells you who the shareholders and directors are; the AFS tells you whether it traded at all last year. Together they separate a real operating business from a shell.

⚠️ Do not pay a stranger to "run the search for you." Certified true copies issued by the SEC come with official certification; a screenshot someone typeset themselves is not evidence of anything.

Reading the Result: Status Is the Field That Matters

Finding a record is not the same as clearing the company. The status field is where the answer lives.

• Active / Existing: registration is in good standing. This is the only status you should proceed on.
• Delinquent: the company exists but failed to file required annual reports such as the GIS and AFS. It signals a company that is either dormant or has no real accounting function. Ask why before you go further.
• Suspended / Revoked: the registration has been suspended or cancelled. The business may still be operating, but its legal standing is compromised — its contracts, receipts, and bank arrangements all carry risk.
• Dissolved: the company has been wound up.

Under the current Revised Corporation Code, companies that fail to file for several consecutive periods are first flagged delinquent and given a window to cure, with revocation as the endpoint if they do not — the exact periods and cure windows follow the SEC's current rules and latest issuances.

Three fields to compare character by character

1. The name. One word of difference is a different company. It is very common in the Philippines for one trade name to sit in front of four separate registered entities — Trading, Marketing, Development, Holdings — and the laziest scam is simply sending you an affiliate's certificate instead of the contracting party's.
2. The incorporation date. If someone claims a fifteen-year track record and the register says last year, either they are describing a different entity or this is a newly purchased shelf company. Shelf companies are legal, but the track record does not belong to that entity.
3. The registered address. Compare it against the contract letterhead, the bank account records, and the business card. A registered address at a virtual office provider is not automatically a problem, but it should be consistent with claims about owning a factory or warehouse.

Two things to extract from the GIS

Do not stop at the shareholder names. Look at paid-up capital and the nationality split of the shareholding. Tiny paid-up capital against a large contract value is a classic risk mismatch. A shareholding structure where several local individuals hold token slices that add up to exactly the required Filipino percentage should raise Anti-Dummy Law questions — which becomes your problem too if you later take equity.

Not Found Does Not Mean Fake: DTI Business Name Verification and Where Other Entity Types Are Registered

If the SEC search comes back empty, your first thought should be "wrong register," not "fraud." Philippine business registration is split across agencies:

• Sole proprietorships register with the DTI, not the SEC. The Department of Trade and Industry runs an online business-name verification where you can confirm a trade name and its validity period. Many small traders and family workshops operate this way, entirely legally — but understand what it means: the owner bears unlimited personal liability, and there are no shareholders, no paid-up capital, no GIS, and no audited financials to inspect.
• Branches, representative offices, and regional headquarters of foreign companies do register with the SEC, but usually under the parent's English name with a qualifier, so search the parent name.
• Cooperatives register with the cooperative authority and will not appear in SEC records at all.
• Regulated sectors need a second license. Money service and forex businesses appear in the central bank (BSP) lists; insurance under the Insurance Commission; food, drugs, cosmetics, and devices under the FDA; construction contracting under PCAB; manpower deployment under the labor authorities. An SEC registration without the sector license means the company is real but the activity is not lawful — the most dangerous combination, because the first half checks out.

The practical rule: establish what legal form your counterparty takes before deciding which register to search. An entity that says nothing clear about its own legal form is the real red flag.

How to Spot a Fake Philippine Business Permit

Authenticity is never judged from the look of the document. Take the name and number to the official register; if they do not match, it is fake or it belongs to someone else.

First clear up a structural difference: the Philippines has no single "business license" in the Chinese sense. What foreign buyers usually mean maps onto three separate documents:

• SEC Certificate of Incorporation — issued once, proves formation.
• Mayor's Permit / Business Permit — issued by the city or municipality and renewed every year. This is the single best evidence that the business is currently operating lawfully.
• BIR Certificate of Registration (Form 2303) — proves tax registration and shows which taxes the entity is registered for.

A counterparty who sends only the SEC certificate has proven only that the company was once formed. To prove it is alive and compliant today, ask for the current-year Mayor's Permit and the BIR 2303.

Five recurring signs of a forged or borrowed document

1. Images only, never a PDF, and always just blurry enough to obscure the numbers. A legitimate company has clean copies; reluctance is the answer.
2. The registered name, the contract party, and the bank account name are not all identical. This is the fatal one — whoever receives the money is your counterparty; everything else is scenery.
3. The Mayor's Permit is from a prior year, or its address does not match the claimed premises.
4. The stated business purpose does not cover the deal — Articles authorizing retail trade while the pitch is about import and bonded logistics.
5. Refusal to hand over the GIS. It is an annually filed document you can order yourself; refusing only delays the moment you find out.

⚠️ The subtler version: every document is genuine, but the person sending them does not work there. The only defence is to call back through a channel your counterparty did not give you — the company website, the registered address, an industry directory — and confirm that this person and this order are real.

Registered Is Not the Same as Safe to Pay: The Background Check Beyond the Register

A valid registration proves the company is entitled to exist. It does not prove it can perform, and it does not make your transaction compliant. Three more gates before payment:

Can it issue you a compliant receipt or invoice?

Philippine rules on official receipts and invoices are strict, and a properly registered business issues BIR-authorized documents with serial numbers and a TIN. A counterparty who will take your money but cannot issue a proper receipt either has no tax registration or is deliberately leaving a gap — and if a dispute arises, you may struggle even to prove payment, let alone book the cost.

Where is the money going?

The corporate account name must match the contracting entity exactly. Requests to pay a personal account, a third-party company, an offshore account, or an e-wallet should be treated as high risk and stopped, no matter how reasonable the explanation sounds — "the company account is under audit," "this way avoids tax," "the boss's account clears faster."

Has it been named in an advisory?

The SEC periodically publishes advisories naming entities soliciting investments without authority. These are public and free to search. Any pitch involving guaranteed returns, fixed monthly payouts, or commissions for recruiting others should be run against those advisories before anything else.

The Pre-Payment Checklist, by Deal Size

A. Every deal, regardless of size (about 30 minutes)

• Get the full English name and registration number and run the search yourself — never rely on their screenshot.
• Confirm the status is Active and that the incorporation date and address fit the story.
• Request the current-year Mayor's Permit and the BIR 2303.
• Confirm that contracting party = invoice header = bank account name, character for character.
• Verify the individual through an independent callback channel.

B. Larger or ongoing relationships (3-5 working days)

• Order the GIS and AFS.
• Read the Articles for authorized purpose and foreign-equity limits.
• Check the applicable sector license.
• Look at the registered address and the claimed plant on satellite and street imagery before booking a flight.

C. JV, M&A, exclusivity, or large prepayment (2-3 weeks)

• Local counsel runs litigation and encumbrance searches; add a title verification if real property is involved.
• An accountant reviews accounting policy and related-party transactions.
• Visit in person — office, warehouse, line, headcount — and see whether reality matches the pitch.
• Register your own trademark before appointing a distributor, not after.

The total cost of this process is typically a fraction of one failed prepayment. If you find yourself permanently dependent on someone else's registration, that is usually the signal to set up your own entity instead.

See also: Facebook Ads in the Philippines.

If Something Is Wrong — Before and After the Wire

Before payment: convert findings into conditions

A flaw does not have to kill the deal, but it must become a written condition:

• Delinquent status → require proof of remedial filing before the balance is paid.
• Paid-up capital far below contract value → require a parent or shareholder guarantee, or move to small staged shipments against payment.
• Payee is not the contracting entity → insist on the corporate account, and accept no explanation.
• Missing sector license → contract with the licensed entity instead, or make obtaining the license a condition precedent.

After payment: three things within 72 hours

1. Preserve evidence. Export chat logs, remittance advices, and every document and account detail. Do not keep arguing in the original thread — messages can be deleted.
2. Go to your remitting bank immediately and ask whether a recall can be initiated. Speed is everything; after a day or two the funds are usually gone.
3. File both a police report with the economic crime unit and a complaint with the SEC or the relevant regulator, depending on the nature of the loss.

One closing truth: verification is defence, not insurance. It removes the obvious fakes and surfaces some of the hidden ones. The rest of the risk is managed through deal structure — small trial orders, staged payments, payment against documents, retained warranty amounts — which will always protect you better than any single certificate.