Simple SOS business search for ID verification
Middesk’s Business Verification suite conducts direct SOS business searches to find reliable business verification information.
Business Profiles
Coverage in the US
Update frequency
Business registries
What is an SOS business search tool?
An SOS business search tool returns SOS filings from Secretary of State offices across the United States, which provide details about companies, including their registration information, legal structure, and more. This information is crucial for business verification purposes.
SOS filing information can provide essential details for assessing a business, as well as early identifiers that could save you time investigating a high-risk entity. Whether you’re looking to verify B2B relationships during onboarding or monitor existing entities for changes to their status or details, an SOS business search tool is essential.
Middesk’s business search tool enables companies to retrieve SOS filings using a business search or via an API, so you can get reliable, accurate information that allows you to onboard businesses with confidence. But we don’t stop there, we also return other valuable business verification information, such as watchlist screenings, liens and UCC filings, adverse media, and more.
How the SOS business lookup tool works
Step 1
Enter the business name and address
Step 2
We return whether the business is registered with any Secretary of State (SOS) offices, and provide information on the businesses filing status, address, officers, and business documents
Step 3
Order additional business verification information, including U.S. watchlists screening, people associated with the business, adverse media, liens and UCC filings, and bankruptcies
Information you can get with our SOS business search tool
Conduct an SOS business lookup to get state registration information and documents for businesses that you onboard and do business with.
Middesk Business Verification Data Sources
Data You Can Access
What Do You Need to Know?
Business name, address, & phone number
Does this information match what the customer told me? Are they conducting legal business in the state I’m trying to conduct business in?
These are early signals of legitimacy and are vital for ensuring you're investigating the right business and working with the right documents.
Business documents
Can I get business documents — such as their Articles of Incorporation or Certificate of Good Standing — to verify their identity and assess their risk?
Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO)
Does the UBO match what the customer told me? Am I sure I know who I’m doing business with?
Business license
Is the business in good standing with local, state, and federal boards?
EIN / Business Tax ID
Is this business who they are claiming to be? Have they registered with the IRS and are they in good standing?
Business industry classification (NAICS, SIC)
Does the company's business operations align with what they claim they do?
Liens & litigations
Are there currently any liens or litigations filed against the business or any individuals associated with the business that I should know about?
Bankruptcy data
Has the business filed for bankruptcy recently or in the past? What financial risk do they pose to me?
Watchlist hits & PEP screening
Are any people associated with the business on the OFAC Sanctions list, a PEP list, or any other watchlist that could pose a compliance risk or otherwise prevent me from doing business with them?
Applications of an SOS business search tool
Many different companies need to verify business identities when starting and managing their B2B relationships, making a Secretary of State business search essential.
Fintechs
Fast-moving, digital-first fintechs rely on accurate, automated business verification to get reliable, fast results. With an SOS business lookup tool, Fintechs can onboard new partners and customers in no time.
Insuring new customers
Meet necessary Know Your Business (KYB) and Customer Identification Program (CIP) compliance regulations and quickly validate businesses with an SOS business search tool. This lets you underwrite more policies — and be more accurate while doing so.
Commercial bank account onboarding
Traditional banks and financial institutions are looking to mitigate risk by verifying businesses and customers alike. With a quality SOS business lookup tool, these FIs can reliably conduct KYB processes.
Lenders
With adequate business verification details provided by an SOS business search tool, you can effectively manage your risk so you can confidently extend capital to customers when lending.
Marketplace
Ensure that marketplace participants are legitimate using an SOS business search tool, allowing you to mitigate risk, reduce the impact of fraud, and build overall trust in your marketplace.
Payments
Payment Service Processors (PSP) and payment providers can quickly validate merchant customers prior to onboarding, maintaining trust and ensuring all payments are secure.
Accelerated entity verification with SOS business searches
Know who you’re doing business with
Valid Secretary of State filing documents help you verify businesses during onboarding.
Automate bulk SOS business searches
If you’re regularly conducting business verification, you can save significant time by automating SOS business searches with a single tool.
Make more confident onboarding decisions
An SOS business search helps you onboard businesses with confidence, as well as make early assessments that save your team time.
Streamline business verification processes
By getting filing documents and other business verification details, you can quickly and easily validate businesses when forming B2B partnerships.
Build using our easy to integrate APIs, or get started with our dashboard
What makes Middesk’s SOS business search tool different?
Complete data
We have Secretary of State filling data for 52 states throughout the United States.
Data freshness
We prioritize fresh data, with 92% of our business records refreshed within the last 10 days.
Automatic monitoring
We monitor businesses for status changes so you can make quick decisions well after onboarding is completed for ongoing risk management.
Manual reviews
If we can’t find the SOS filing you’re looking for in our database, someone from our team will manually review your request within 5 minutes.
How Radius Bank finds more hours in the day with Middesk
“Every minute we’re able to save in processing loans is a minute faster than a small business will have access to the capital they need. With Middesk, what ordinarily would have taken us hours to do is now taking us minutes. We take pride in partnering with technology companies that help us serve our customers better.”
How Novo redefines its KYB process with Middesk’s verification product
“Middesk's market-leading methods challenge the established legacy approach to verification. Their product has unlocked significant efficiency, enhancing the onboarding experience for small businesses to access Novo. Middesk’s ground-up approach to product development played an integral part in increasing confidence in KYB, both internally and with partners.”
Driving team efficiency and performance with Clearco
“Middesk's Lien Search product has allowed my team to focus on value-add activities like making deals rather than tedious tasks like sifting through UCC portals. My team is faster and happier with getting business owners the capital they need to grow their businesses.”
Leveling up Plaid’s onboarding process with seamless KYB
“When a customer signs up for Plaid, they want to start building on our APIs right away. Middesk has been a critical partner enabling us to quickly and seamlessly onboard new customers.”
Frequently Asked Questions about SOS business searches
Without doing an SOS business search, it can be difficult to ensure you’re doing business with a company that’s legally registered to operate in the United States.
SOS filing data provides information that helps companies verify business prospects for the purpose of B2B relationships, as well as monitor for changes to statuses. This enables them to assess risk and manage their business relationships.
The data comes from Secretary of State offices across the United States.
Middesk validates SOS filing data to verify business identities.
Since SOS filings are managed separately by each Secretary of State office, organizations need to manually search each Secretary of State office one by one. This can be incredibly tedious and time-consuming. Middesk SOS business search tool verifies and normalizes SOS filing details for all states so you can do one simple search to retrieve all the data you need to validate the business.
Get started with a Secretary of State business search immediately. For SOS monitoring that alerts you to status changes for the businesses you’re working with, you can easily integrate an API in a couple days.
Validate businesses with reliable SOS filing details
Build using our easy-to-integrate APIs, or get started with our dashboard
