Before you pay: do the contract, the invoice and the bank beneficiary name the same party?

The single most repeated crisis in buyer forums is some version of “I was about to wire the deposit and the bank details did not match the company I signed with.” Comparing the three names is a wording-level check that needs no database — which is why it belongs in your browser, not behind a working day of waiting. Paste the names as written on each document; the checker normalises the cosmetic differences and tells you, for every pair, exactly which words line up and which do not.

How the matching works

Company names travel badly between documents: a contract carries the full registered form, a bank field truncates it, a sales rep writes the short form. The checker removes the differences that mean nothing and compares what remains.

What remains after those steps is the distinctive wording. If both names reduce to the same tokens, the pair is a match (word order does not matter). If one name is fully contained in the other, or the shared tokens cover at least half of the combined wording, it is a partial — and the result names the exact words each side adds. Below that overlap it is a mismatch. The rules are fixed and visible here; nothing is scored, weighted or learnt.

One deliberate gap: Chinese registered names have no spaces between words, so this tool compares them as whole strings and does not strip Chinese legal forms (有限公司 and friends). For Chinese names, compare character by character against the business licence, or run the exact registered name through the free registry lookup.

The three outcomes, each in four layers

Every result is written the same way our reports are: the Fact of what the comparison found, its Relevance to the payment in front of you, the Limit of what the result means, and the Next action it points at.

• Match — same distinctive wording everywhere.

  Fact. After normalisation, every pasted name reduces to the same tokens.

  Relevance. The paperwork points at one party as written — the question moves from “do the names agree” to “is that party who it claims to be, and is the account theirs”.

  Limit. A wording match does not prove the bank account belongs to that party, and says nothing about whether paying is wise. Anyone can copy a company name onto an invoice.

  Next action. Confirm the account against the bank account verification steps before the transfer.

• Partial — a shared core, with named differences.

  Fact. The names share a core of identical wording; the result lists which words appear on only one side — typically a city prefix, an industry word, or a group marker.

  Relevance. Most partials are benign: bank fields truncate, sales staff shorten, “Shenzhen ABC Technology” becomes “ABC Technology”. Some are not: a same-named sibling entity inside a group is a different legal person.

  Limit. This tool cannot separate an abbreviation from a different company. Only the registered record — and the supplier’s written confirmation quoting the 18-character code — closes that gap.

  Next action. Ask the supplier to confirm in writing that both names are the same registered entity, then run the payment-entity check.

• Mismatch — the wording does not line up.

  Fact. The names share no distinctive wording above the overlap threshold; the result shows which document disagrees with which.

  Relevance. Paying a beneficiary whose name does not line up with your contract is the exact pattern behind the most common payment-dispute stories buyers tell. Holding costs a day; wiring first can cost the dispute.

  Limit. A mismatch is a hold signal, not a fraud verdict. Group companies, trade names and recent renames all produce legitimate differences — what matters is that the difference is explained and evidenced before money moves.

  Next action. Hold the payment, ask for a written explanation naming the registered entity behind each name, and check the record before releasing anything.

What this check cannot prove

• It does not prove account ownership. The same or identical wording across documents does not prove the bank account belongs to that party — banks, not string comparison, hold that fact. The account verification guide covers the ownership questions.
• It does not prove the entity exists or is current. That is the registry record’s job: the unified social credit code checker validates the code on the licence, and the free lookup reads the registered name, status and scope when a data source is available.
• It does not judge the counterparty. No output of this page is a verdict on anyone — the three outcomes describe wording, nothing more.
• It is not legal advice, and it does not replace reading the contract you actually signed.

Why this check is free and instant

Desk verification services answer this same question on a working-day clock: China Company Lookup lists its Registry Check at $69 with results in 24 hours, and Registration China lists manual reports from $99 with a 1 working day turnaround (both from their own public pages, checked 21 August 2026). Those reports do more than name-matching — but the name question itself takes about ten minutes and no data source, so charging a day for it is a packaging choice, not a technical one. For the full spectrum of what each tier of verification can and cannot answer, see the methods comparison.

Provider figures above come from their own public pages on the stated date; prices and turnaround change without notice. Nothing here assesses their delivered quality — no reports were purchased.

Before any of this matters, you need the names themselves: ask for a photo of the business licence (营业执照) — the registered Chinese name and its 18-character code are both on it — and match the English names on your documents to that record.