The deposit is the decision
Almost everything else in a first order is recoverable. Specifications can be renegotiated, lead times can slip and be absorbed, even a bad production run can sometimes be reworked or discounted. The deposit is different: once transferred internationally, it is protected mainly by the honesty and competence of the recipient. Practical recovery through legal channels, for typical first-order amounts, is close to a fiction.
That asymmetry sets the standard for this checklist. Everything on it is cheap — a few emails, a registry lookup, a document read — and every item exists because its absence has cost real buyers real money.
Part 1: The identity chain
Confirm the registered entity. Get the supplier's Chinese legal name and unified social credit code, and check the registration is active with no abnormal-operation entries. (The business license guide covers this step in detail.)
Match the chain end to end. Three names must resolve into one coherent picture:
- the company on the quotation and PI,
- the registered entity from the registry,
- the bank beneficiary on the payment instructions.
Where they differ — an English trading name, a Hong Kong billing entity — the relationship must be documented, not assumed. The specific transfer you are about to make goes to name 3. If name 3 connects to nothing you have verified, you are not paying the supplier; you are paying a stranger the supplier's email introduced.
Treat any beneficiary change as an alarm. Bank details that change between drafts, or by email mid-transaction, are the signature of compromised email fraud. Verify any change on a channel the email thread does not control.
Personal accounts are a category of their own. Paying an individual for a company's goods removes the payment from corporate accountability entirely. Whatever the stated reason, it moves the transaction into a different risk class.
Part 2: The terms
Deposit percentage. 30% is the broad norm for manufactured goods; tooling-heavy orders run higher. A demand well above norm without a tooling reason compresses your leverage; an oddly low deposit from an unknown supplier is not automatically reassuring either — it is sometimes bait for a larger balance-stage problem.
The balance trigger. The single most consequential clause on the PI. "Balance before shipment" with no inspection stage means your last leverage expires while the goods are still in the supplier's warehouse and unexamined. The fix costs nothing to ask for: balance payable after a pre-shipment inspection, by you, your agent, or a third-party inspection company.
Specification completeness. A dispute is resolvable only to the level of detail written down. Materials, dimensions, tolerances, colours (by code, not adjective), packaging, labelling, compliance markings — if it matters and is not on the PI or a referenced spec sheet, it does not exist contractually.
Lead time, and from when. "30 days" from deposit receipt, sample approval, or something else? Ambiguity here manufactures disputes on schedule.
Warranty and remedy language. What happens if goods are defective — rework, replacement, refund, discount? Against what standard, decided by whom, within what window? One sentence on the PI is worth more than any verbal assurance.
Part 3: The behavioural read
Pressure is information. Discounts expiring today, production slots about to be given away, polite requests turning insistent around the transfer date — an honest supplier wants your money too, but rarely needs you to skip verification to send it.
Watch the answers, not just the facts. Every check above ends as a question to the supplier. Specific, documented, prompt answers — even unwelcome ones — are the signature of a business used to being checked. Vagueness, subject-changing and offence at routine questions are findings in themselves.
The checklist, compressed
Before transferring, you should be able to tick every line:
- [ ] Registered entity identified (Chinese name + USCC), status active, no abnormal-operation entries
- [ ] PI seller = registered entity (or relationship documented)
- [ ] Bank beneficiary = PI seller (or relationship documented)
- [ ] Company account, not personal
- [ ] No unexplained mid-negotiation change of bank details
- [ ] Deposit percentage within norms, or the excess explained
- [ ] Balance trigger includes an inspection stage
- [ ] Specification detailed enough to make a defect provable
- [ ] Lead time anchored to a defined start event
- [ ] Warranty/remedy language present
- [ ] Every question you asked got a specific answer in writing
When to escalate beyond self-checking
Three situations justify professional verification before the transfer: the amount is large enough that a total loss would genuinely hurt; the identity chain has a mismatch you cannot resolve with the supplier's own answers; or the factory claim is central to the price and untested. The first two are a documentary review with language and registry access. The third is a site question, answerable by a live video visit at the claimed production address.
And one boundary worth respecting in the other direction: no check on this page — ours or yours — makes a payment safe. The checklist converts unknown risk into known, priced risk. What you do with a known risk is the commercial judgement no service can make for you.