How to Check a Nigerian Tech Company Is Real Before You Pay Them

A large amount of money leaves Nigerian businesses every year for websites and software that never arrive. Almost none of it goes to sophisticated fraud. It goes to an Instagram page, a nice deck, a WhatsApp number and a deposit.

These four checks take about fifteen minutes and filter out most of the risk.

1. Check they are a registered company

Every legitimate business in Nigeria is registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission and has a registration number. The CAC keeps a public search portal, and looking a company up is free.

Ask for the registration number in writing, then search for it yourself. Do not accept a screenshot. A screenshot proves nothing, and producing a convincing one takes about four minutes.

What you are checking:

• The company exists on the register
• The name on the register matches the name on the invoice
• The company is active rather than dormant or struck off

If a supplier cannot give you a number, stop there. It is not a small administrative gap. It means there is no legal entity to hold to a contract, no entity to sue, and nothing to escalate to when the work stops.

For what it is worth, ours is RC 9834403. Go and check it.

2. Make them show you something running

Not a screenshot, not a PDF, not a case study. A URL you can open on your own phone while you are sitting there.

Then do one more thing that almost nobody does: open the site and look for the client's own contact details. Call the number. Ask the client whether this company built it.

That single call is the most informative fifteen minutes in the whole process, and it is free. An agency with real clients will offer the references before you ask. An agency without them will explain why references are confidential.

3. Check who owns the accounts

This is the one that catches good people out, because it goes wrong quietly and you only find out later.

Ask, in writing, before any money moves:

• Whose name is the domain registered in?
• Whose account is the hosting under?
• Where does the source code live, and who owns that account?

The answer should be you, on all three, from day one. Not "we will transfer it at the end". Transfers at the end frequently do not happen, and a supplier who controls your domain controls your email, your website and your ability to leave.

If the domain is in the agency's name, you are not a client. You are a tenant.

4. Get the plan in writing before the deposit

A proper supplier will put the following on paper before asking you for money:

• What they are building, described specifically enough that both of you would agree later whether it was delivered
• What is explicitly not included
• The timeline, with dates
• The total price and the payment schedule
• What happens if either side wants to stop

If all you have is a figure in a chat message, you do not have an agreement. You have an expectation, and expectations are the thing that gets argued about in month three.

The red flags, ranked

In rough order of how reliably they predict trouble:

1. No CAC number, or reluctance to give one
2. Cannot show live work with reachable clients
3. Wants the domain in their name
4. Full payment up front. A deposit is normal. All of it is not
5. A price far below everyone else. See what this work actually costs. A quote at a third of the market rate is not a bargain, it is an unfinished project with a deposit attached
6. No written scope
7. Only reachable on WhatsApp, with no company email and no office

One of these is worth a question. Three of them together is an answer.

Why we wrote this

We are not disinterested. We sell the thing this article is about, and an article like this is obviously good for a company that passes its own checks.

But the reason it is worth publishing is that the alternative is worse for everybody who does this properly. Every business that loses four million naira to a supplier who vanished becomes a business that will not commission digital work again, and treats the next honest quote as a threat rather than an offer.

The industry cannot fix that by claiming to be trustworthy. Trustworthy is not a claim, it is a number you can check.

If you are further along than this, the nine questions that predict a failed project cover what to ask once you know the company is real.