Vendor Business Verification is an optional paid service that adds a business identity check to your payee onboarding flow. When enabled, vendors and contractors who receive an onboarding invitation are asked to submit their business name, address, business type, EIN (Tax ID), and a W-9 form. CashCloud then automatically verifies that information against federal records.
This helps your team confirm vendor identity and stay on top of compliance requirements before issuing payments.
đ Note: Vendor Business Verification only applies to payees with a payee type of Vendor or Contractor.
Before you begin
Vendor Business Verification must be enabled by a company Owner before it becomes available. To enable it, go to the Services module, locate Vendor Business Verification, and follow the prompts to review and accept the Terms and Conditions.
Once enabled, the service applies to all future onboarding invitations sent to payees with a payee type of Vendor or Contractor.
Verification fees are deducted from your CashCloud Credits balance once each payee successfully completes verification. For pricing details, refer to your contract or visit our pricing page.
Sending onboarding invitations
When you send an onboarding invitation to a Vendor or Contractor, CashCloud displays a cost estimate before you confirm. The estimated cost is calculated based on the number of invitations you are sending.
If ACH is one of the available deposit methods, the estimate includes both the Vendor Business Verification fee and the Bank Account Verification fee. In either case, you are not charged right away â fees are only deducted once each payee successfully completes the relevant verification step.
Before the invitations are sent, CashCloud checks your CashCloud Credits balance. If your balance is sufficient, the invitations go out. If not, you will be prompted to top up your Credits before continuing.
â ď¸ Important: Vendor Business Verification is not available when using the New payee â Invite payees flow, because payee type is not yet assigned at that point. To use Vendor Business Verification, first add or upload the payee, set their payee type to Vendor or Contractor, and then send the onboarding invitation from the payees table.
For step-by-step instructions on sending and resending onboarding invitations, refer to our Payee Onboarding article.
What your vendor sees
During onboarding, vendors and contractors are presented with an additional step to complete their business and tax information. They will be asked to provide:
Business name
Business address
Business type
EIN (Tax ID)
W-9 form
Once submitted, CashCloud automatically runs the verification in the background. Your vendor does not need to take any further action.
Verification results
After verification is complete, results are available in the payee record under the Basic Information tab, in a Tax Information section. This section shows the business type and EIN submitted by the vendor, as well as the uploaded W-9 form, which you can download.
The Tax Information section also shows the current verification status:
Not started â No onboarding invitation has been sent yet. You can initiate onboarding directly from this section.
In progress â Verification is currently underway.
Verified â The tax and business information has been successfully verified.
Failed â Verification was not successful. We recommend confirming the vendor's details before proceeding.
You will also receive a notification with the results.
Payee statuses
With Vendor Business Verification enabled, the Status column in your payees table reflects both onboarding and verification state:
Created: The payee has been added, but an onboarding invitation has not been sent.
Onboarded: The payee completed onboarding.
Verifying: Tax and business verification is in progress.
Verified: The payee has passed tax and business verification.
Restricted: Verification was not successful.
You can filter your payees table by any of these statuses to quickly identify payees that need attention.
Blocking payments for unverified payees
Within the Tax Information section of each payee record, you will find a setting called Block payments until payee has been verified. This option is enabled by default for all vendors and contractors when Vendor Business Verification is active.
When this option is on, CashCloud will not disburse payments to that payee until their status is Verified. Payments remain visible in the disbursement table but cannot be processed until verification is complete.
You can turn this option off at any time on the individual payee record if you need to release a payment before verification is complete.
đĄ To keep in mind: This is a per-payee setting. Turning it off for one vendor does not affect any other payees in your account.
When verification fails
If Vendor Business Verification is not successful, CashCloud logs an alert in your Notifications regardless of your notification preferences. You will also receive an email with the reason for the failure and recommended next steps â including the option to contact the vendor directly to confirm their information, or to resend the onboarding invitation.
The vendor also receives an email letting them know that the verification step could not be completed and that they should reach out to you for next steps.
To resend the onboarding invitation, open the overflow menu on the payee's row in the payees table and select Resend onboarding, or go to the Tax Information section on their payee record and initiate onboarding from there.
Need a hand? Contact our support team at [email protected] and we'll take it from there đ