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International Business Search: Best Practices

This guide covers how to get the best results from International Business Search. For a step-by-step walkthrough, see the API Quickstart; for the overview and country list, see International Products: Basics.

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Name + address is the standard, offer the registration number as an option

POST /international/searches works well with just name + address, and that’s all you need for the vast majority of verifications. You don’t need the registration number to get good results. That said, offering the registration number as an optional input is a nice touch. In many countries, owners and finance staff know their company’s registration number by heart, so letting them type it in is fast and familiar.
  • Pass filing_number (with iso2_country_code) whenever the user provides it.
  • When filing_number is provided, the registry is searched by that number first; a name, if also included, is used as a fallback when no company matches the number.
  • With a filing_number, name and address are optional, but send whatever you have: each input you provide is matched and counts toward the KYB score, and a name also gives the search a fallback if the number doesn’t resolve.
Tip: Localize the field label to the term your users know. In Spain, for example, the registration number is the CIF. Labeling the input with the local term (rather than a generic “registration number”) makes it obvious what to enter and improves completion.

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Optional: smooth out low match rates with a registration lookup

If you notice match rates in a particular market aren’t as high as you’d like, you can offer users a smoother path with GET /international/registrations: list the candidate registrations, let the user pick the right one, then search using that result’s filing_number. The flow:
  1. List candidates: GET /international/registrationsreturns a list of matching registrations.
  2. Let the user pick the correct entity from that list.
  3. Search: take the filing_number from the chosen result and pass it to POST /international/searches for the complete business profile.
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This lets the user confirm the specific company they intended before you run the search, which can help in markets where name-based matching is trickier.
Note: This is a nice-to-have, not a requirement. A plain name + address search is the standard, fully-supported path and works well on its own. Reach for the registration lookup only if you want to improve the experience.

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Request Enhanced Profiles when you need ownership depth

By default a search returns the core registration profile (name, file number, status, country and addresses). To also return directors, ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs), shareholders, and share capital, add the Order.Enhanced option:
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Enhanced Profiles are billed separately, per country. Coverage and available fields vary by jurisdiction. Contact your account manager for more details.

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Expect data depth to vary by country

International Business Search covers 76 jurisdictions through different corporate registries, and the depth of data differs between them. Design for this:
  • Treat core fields as guaranteed, extras as best-effort. name, file_number, status, and country are present everywhere; richer detail depends on the jurisdiction.
  • Country availability can change as registry access evolves. Confirm the current list in the Basics guide or with your account manager.

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Reuse your US scoring and matching logic

International Business Search returns KYB and Risk ratings on the same scale as the US product, with the same grade bands (A ≥ 90, B ≥ 80, C ≥ 60; only A and B count as verified). The KYB score only counts the inputs you sent, so a filing-number-only search is scored fairly against the registry. It also uses a very similar matching logic. You can apply the same thresholds and decisioning you already use for US searches, no separate calibration required. See Scores & Ratings. Name matching also understands local legal forms: a full legal form and its abbreviation are treated as the same name in Spain, France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy (for example SL and Sociedad Limitada, or GmbH, SARL and BV and their long forms). You don’t need to normalize these yourself.

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Use watchlist hits, and read them correctly

Every international search screens the company, any alternative_names you send, and its current officers and beneficial owners against OFAC, CSL, FBI, Canadian sanctions and OIG, plus PEP when you add Order.Pep. Results appear in watchlist_hits.
  • Send known trade names in alternative_names so they’re screened too.
  • A count of 0 is a clean screen; an absent list is not. A list is absent when it wasn’t screened (turned off in your settings, or PEP not ordered).
  • Tune lists and match strictness in Account Settings. The same settings apply to US and international searches.
  • A confirmed OFAC hit already sets Risk to 0 / F, so your existing Risk thresholds will catch it.

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Read the match indicators like you do in the US

Every result includes match signals that behave just like the US Business Search:
  • business_name_match: EXACT / SIMILAR / NO_MATCH (identical to the US).
  • business_address_match: EXACT / CITY / REGION / COUNTRY / NO_MATCH (international granularity).
  • filing_number_match: an international-only boolean - true if the registration number you sent located the company, false if the search fell back to name matching, and null if none was sent.
Use business_name_match and business_address_match in your decisioning exactly as you do for US searches. filing_number_match is also a useful way to monitor your registration-number option: if it’s frequently false, users are likely entering a number that doesn’t resolve for that jurisdiction - a signal to revisit the field’s label or help text (see offer the registration number above).

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Prefer webhooks over polling

International searches are asynchronous. Subscribe to InternationalBusinessSearch.completed (and .failed) rather than polling GET /international/searches/{id} on a tight loop, it’s more efficient and gives you results as soon as they’re ready. See the Webhooks at Baselayer.

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Know what International Business Search does not do

  • No TIN verification: IRS TIN matching is US-only.
  • No online-presence add-ons on the search: for website analysis, industry prediction, and other online-presence signals internationally, use the Web Presence endpoint (POST /web_presence_requests), which supports international requests via iso2_country_code. See International Products: Basics.
  • Country-specific pricing: negotiated separately from your US contract.

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Putting It All Together

A strong international KYB integration:
  • Uses name + address as the default: and gets great results with it
  • Offers the registration number as an optional, locally-labeled input where users are likely to know it
  • Adds Enhanced Profiles only when you need ownership depth
  • Reuses your existing US scoring and matching thresholds, since they are similar
  • Falls back to the registration lookup if necessary
Get those right and international verification behaves like a natural extension of your US flow: same ratings, same matching logic, same webhook pattern, with a bit of per-country awareness.

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Where to Go Next