Paste your supplier’s GSTIN below and confirm it is genuine, active and registered to the business you think it is — before you release the payment. Why verify a supplier’s GST number before paying When a supplier bills you with GST, you are paying tax on their behalf and claiming it back as input tax credit (ITC). That claim only survives if the GSTIN on the invoice is real, active and actually belongs to the supplier. If it is fake, cancelled or belongs to someone else, the tax department can deny your ITC, demand it back with interest, and in serious cases levy penalties — even though you paid the invoice in good faith. Thirty seconds of verification protects money you have already budgeted as recoverable. Verification also protects the relationship itself. A supplier whose registration status is Suspended may be behind on return filing; a supplier whose GSTIN was registered last month while their brochure claims a decade of operations deserves a follow-up question. The registration record tells you things a sales pitch will not. Common fake-GSTIN fraud patterns The invented number. A random 15-character string printed on the invoice. These usually fail the built-in checksum — our tool rejects them instantly, without even needing a database lookup. The borrowed number. A real, active GSTIN — belonging to a completely different business. The number verifies, but the legal name on the result does not match the name on the invoice. Always compare names, not just status. The cancelled number. A GSTIN that was genuine once but has since been cancelled, often after the entity vanished. Invoices issued against it after the cancellation date cannot support ITC. The wrong-state number. The supplier bills you CGST + SGST from a state where they hold no registration. Check that the first two digits match the state on the invoice — decode them with the GST state code list . The lookalike edit. One character of a genuine GSTIN altered so payments and credits land somewhere unexpected. The check digit catches most single-character edits, which is exactly what it was designed for — see how it works in the GST number format guide . Vendor onboarding checklist Run this once for every new supplier, and again annually for the ones you pay the most:

Verify the GSTIN above and save a copy of the result with the vendor file. Match the legal name on the verification result to the name on the vendor’s invoice, agreement and bank account. Trade names can differ; legal names should reconcile. Confirm the status is Active . If it shows Cancelled or Suspended, pause onboarding and see what each GST status means before proceeding. Check the state code matches the place of supply your contracts assume — it decides whether you should be charged IGST or CGST + SGST (worked examples on the GST calculator page). Note the registration date and constitution of business ; both should be consistent with what the vendor has told you. If the vendor operates in several states, pull all their registrations in one go with GST search by PAN . For large vendor lists, wait for our bulk GST verification tool rather than checking hundreds of rows by hand. GST verification FAQs Two things: that the GSTIN is structurally valid (correct format and check digit), and that it exists in GSTN registration records with a live status. The result also returns the legal name, trade name, state, registration date and taxpayer type so you can match the number to the business. For supplies invoiced after the cancellation date, ITC is generally not available, and claims already made can be reversed with interest. That is precisely why verifying before payment — not after — matters. When in doubt, consult your tax advisor about the specific dates involved. Stop and ask the supplier. Sometimes it is innocent — a trade name versus legal name mismatch, which you can read about under GST search by name . Sometimes it is a borrowed GSTIN, which is fraud. The verification result shows both names so you can tell the difference. A practical rhythm: at onboarding, before any unusually large payment, and once a year for the rest. Registrations get cancelled and suspended all the time; a vendor verified in 2024 is not automatically fine in 2026. Our data is sourced from GSTN records via authorised verification APIs (see data sources ), so the substance is the same. For formal proceedings, your tax professional may still want a screenshot from gst.gov.in; for day-to-day payment controls, this tool is built to be faster.