By SupplierVerify Team | Published: April 25, 2026
You've negotiated the price, approved the sample, and signed the contract. Now the supplier sends you payment instructions — a SWIFT code, an account number, a beneficiary name. This is the moment of maximum risk. Once you send a wire transfer, your money is in the Chinese banking system. Recovering it requires the receiving bank's cooperation, and Chinese banks only reverse transfers with a court order or the account holder's consent. Before you press send, here are five checks to verify the bank account actually belongs to the company you think you're paying.
The most common payment fraud in China sourcing isn't sophisticated — it's simple. A scammer negotiates professionally under a real company's name (or a convincing fake), sends payment instructions for a bank account that does not belong to that company, and disappears with the deposit. The real company may be legitimate — but they never received your money, and they have no obligation to ship your order. The scammer exploited a gap between "who you think you're paying" and "who actually owns the bank account." Closing that gap — verifying that the bank account belongs to the legal entity on the business license — is the single most important pre-payment check you can do. Here's how.
This is the most important check, and it's the one most buyers skip because they assume the name on the payment instructions must be correct. When you receive payment instructions, compare the beneficiary name to the Chinese legal name on the supplier's business license. They must match exactly — same characters, same order, same company type suffix (有限公司 vs. 有限责任公司 vs. 股份有限公司). Not "close." Not "probably the same company." Exact match.
If the beneficiary name is in English on the payment instructions, ask for it in Chinese. Chinese bank accounts are opened with the company's Chinese legal name. The English version on the SWIFT instruction is a transliteration that may not perfectly correspond to the Chinese original. Get the Chinese characters and compare them directly to the license.
A legitimate Chinese company receives payments into a corporate bank account registered to the company's legal name. If the supplier asks you to send money to a personal account — an individual's name, not a company name — this is a major red flag. Common excuses: "Our company account has a limit on foreign currency receipts," "It's faster to send to my personal account," "This is our finance manager's account — it's standard procedure." None of these are valid. Chinese companies can receive foreign currency into corporate accounts. Sending to a personal account means you're paying an individual, not a company. If that individual disappears, you have no claim against the company you thought you were dealing with — you sent money to a person, not a business.
There is one narrow exception: very small Chinese businesses (individual industrial and commercial households, 个体工商户) may use the owner's personal account for business purposes. This is legal but rare in export. If the supplier claims this structure, verify it by checking their business license — the business type must be 个体工商户 — and proceed with extreme caution. For orders over $1,000, insist on a corporate account.
Chinese companies overwhelmingly open their primary corporate bank accounts near their registered address — usually in the same city or province. If the supplier is registered in Shenzhen (Guangdong province) but the bank account is in a small city in Henan province 1,500 km away, that's a discrepancy that needs explaining. Legitimate reasons for a geographic mismatch exist — the company may have a subsidiary or branch in another province, or it may have moved operations while keeping its original registration — but these should be documented, not asserted. Check the business license for branch offices and ask directly: "Your registered address is in Shenzhen but the bank account is in Zhengzhou. Can you explain the relationship?" Vague answers or irritation at the question are warning signs.
Many Chinese exporters ask buyers to send payment to a Hong Kong bank account rather than a mainland Chinese account. This is not automatically a red flag — many legitimate exporters use Hong Kong entities for valid reasons: Hong Kong has no foreign exchange controls (unlike mainland China), it's easier for buyers to send USD/HKD/EUR to Hong Kong than to mainland China, and Hong Kong's legal system is common-law based and more accessible to international buyers. But the legitimacy of a Hong Kong payment channel depends on one thing: the Hong Kong entity must be verifiably connected to the mainland Chinese supplier. Ask for: the Hong Kong company's registration number and a copy of its Business Registration Certificate (the Hong Kong equivalent of a business license), and documentation showing the relationship between the mainland company and the Hong Kong entity (common ownership, subsidiary structure, or a formal service agreement). If the supplier's mainland company is "Shenzhen ABC Electronics Co., Ltd." and the Hong Kong entity is "ABC Electronics (HK) Limited" with the same shareholder — that's a standard and legitimate structure. If the mainland company is "Shenzhen ABC Electronics" and the Hong Kong entity is "XYZ Trading Limited" with no documented connection — treat it as a red flag.
For orders above $10,000, consider sending a small test transfer — $50 to $200 — before sending the full deposit. The purpose is not to verify the account exists (your bank will confirm that) but to verify that the account belongs to who you think it does. After the micro-transfer: confirm with the supplier that they received it and can identify the exact amount and sender, request a confirmation document from their bank showing the receipt (Chinese banks provide electronic receipts for all incoming transfers), and compare the receiving account details on the bank's confirmation to the payment instructions you were given. The test costs a wire fee ($15–$50) and takes 1–3 business days. Against a potential loss of $10,000+, it's cheap insurance. The test won't catch every fraud, but it adds friction that scammers typically can't pass — a scammer with a fake account won't have a real company's bank records to confirm receipt.
Most bank account fraud follows one of these patterns. If you see any of them, stop the payment and investigate:
Before every wire transfer to a Chinese supplier, verify:
This checklist takes 15–30 minutes. The average wire transfer fraud loss is over $5,000. Run the checks. Every time. No exceptions for suppliers who "feel trustworthy" or "have great reviews." The suppliers who feel most trustworthy are often the best scammers — that's the job.
Bank account verification assumes you're dealing with a real company. But what if the company itself is fraudulent? Our Safety Shield report verifies the business license, litigation history, and operational status — so you know the company behind the bank account is legitimate. For high-value orders, add a Reality View on-site audit to confirm the factory exists before you wire. Starting at $49.
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