🇰🇪How to verify a supplier in Kenya

Registry

Kenya Revenue Authority iTax PIN Checker (tax identity), with the company register itself held by the Business Registration Service (BRS) on eCitizen

Company ID

KRA PIN, 11 characters (a letter, nine digits and a trailing letter); a company PIN starts with P, an individual's with A

Cost

Free basic lookup

Active status

A genuine Kenyan supplier gives you a PIN that comes back Active. A PIN that is not found, or that resolves to a different name than the company quoting you, means you are not talking to the registered taxpayer. Ask for the KRA PIN certificate and a current tax compliance certificate, which a dormant company cannot obtain.

• The strongest free Kenyan proof that a company actually MAKES something: the KEBS Standardization Mark register at https://www.kebs.org/products-with-smarks/, published by the Kenya Bureau of Standards with 42,715 permits and a plain search box, no login. Each entry names the company, the brand, the product, the Kenyan or East African standard it is certified against, the permit number and the issue and expiry dates, and it reads Valid or Expired. A supplier claiming to manufacture a regulated product in Kenya and absent from this register is claiming something the state has not certified.
• The Diamond Mark of Quality (D-Mark) is the higher voluntary tier of the same KEBS scheme, valid four years, and a D-Mark holder automatically qualifies for the standardization mark. Ask which mark the supplier holds and check the permit in the register above.
• The company register: the Business Registration Service (brs.go.ke) is the sole custodian of registration data for Kenyan entities, and its search sits inside the eCitizen portal (brs.ecitizen.go.ke), which serves a browser check rather than an open lookup. There is no free anonymous machine-readable Kenyan company search, so treat any site offering one as a reseller of data of unknown freshness, and for a serious order ask the supplier for a CR12 extract, the official list of a company's current shareholders and directors issued by the registrar.
• Manufacturer standing: membership of the Kenya Association of Manufacturers is published openly at https://directory.kam.co.ke/ with 1,003 member listings by industry sector. It is an industry body, not a state register, so treat it as corroboration of a manufacturing profile rather than proof of legal status.
• Exporters: Kenya's export promotion and free-zone bodies do not publish open company lists, the Export Processing Zones Authority Directory page carries no register of zone enterprises, so an exporter claim is best checked through the KRA PIN plus the KEBS permit rather than through an exporter directory.

Before you sign: five asks no registry can answer

The register proves the company exists and who signs. It says nothing about whether the supplier survives a bad quarter, a fire or a key person leaving. Serious suppliers answer these five asks without friction; hesitation on any of them is information too.

• Business continuity: what happens to your order if their plant loses power, a strike hits or their systems go down? Ask for the plan, not a reassurance.
• Liability insurance: is product or professional liability insured, with which insurer and to what ceiling? A certificate of insurance is a one-page email for a real firm.
• Exit terms: how do you terminate if it goes wrong, what notice and fees apply, and how do you get your tooling, molds or data back?
• Support in numbers: ask for response and resolution times as figures, not adjectives. A supplier who commits to hours in writing has a support process; one who writes fast support does not.
• Named people: who exactly runs production and who owns your account? Continuity of a named team matters more than a polished sales deck, and employee-review sites often show whether that team stays.

General commercial hygiene, not legal advice.