Business Verification South Africa

Business verification — also called KYB, Know Your Business, or simply company verification — is the process of confirming that a company is real, registered, valid and connected to the right directors. Contactable's business verification orchestrates CIPC (for South African companies), GLEIF (for global entities) and director validation through one API. The entity check that answers "is this business real?" — not just "is it registered?"

No. CIPC confirms registration, but not whether the directors are validated, the company is operating, or whether the global entities behind cross-border transactions exist. Most defensible KYB programmes layer at least three checks — CIPC, GLEIF and director validation — and that's what Contactable's business verification orchestrates in one flow.

GLEIF is the global LEI registry — used to validate international entities your South African registry doesn't cover. For cross-border vendor onboarding or counterparty checks, it's the equivalent of CIPC for the rest of the world. Verifying foreign entities against GLEIF gives you a defendable identity check that goes beyond a name on a contract.

UBO is a separate capability. Business verification validates the company, global entity record and directors. Ultimate Beneficial Ownership goes further by mapping ownership and control structures across entities and natural persons. Most enterprises run business verification at onboarding and UBO at the depth a regulator requires. Find out more about our product Dominion UBO.