Before you sign with a new partner, ship on account or extend payment terms, a quarter of an hour spent on what the public registers say about them is time well spent. In Malta a lot of it is public, and free.
1. Find the company in the Malta Business Registry
Start from the registration number — the letter and digits a company receives when it is entered in the register, such as C 12345. It is its primary identifier, it does not change, and it is not reissued after the company is struck off. Quote it whole: the letter says what kind of entity it is, and C 100 and P 100 are two different businesses. If you only have a name, search on that and make sure you have the right company — with 121,000 entries on the register, similar names are very common.
Look at three things: whether the company is active or in liquidation, when it was registered, and its legal form. A company founded yesterday is not a bad sign in itself, but it does mean you have no history to judge it on.
2. See who stands behind it
Directors, the company secretary and shareholders are recorded with the Malta Business Registry, but they are not part of its free open data. They appear in the company's filed annual returns, which are documents: you order them through the Registry's portal and pay per sheet, the same way as the accounts in step 5. Once you have them, two questions matter: whether the person negotiating with you actually has authority to act for the company, and whether the directors have changed recently. A change on its own says nothing — a change immediately before a large transaction is worth asking about.
3. Check the insolvency register
This one is free. The Office of the Official Receiver keeps an insolvency register that shows whether proceedings have been opened against a company, and you can search it by the company's registration number through the courts' online services at ecourts.gov.mt; the Official Receiver's own register asks for a one-time free registration. An opened case changes everything: payments can later be challenged, and your claim joins a queue.
4. Check the VAT number and VAT status
If a partner invoices you with VAT, they must be registered for it. Check the VAT number — MT plus eight digits — in the European Commission's VIES system, which covers Malta and answers in real time.
A missing VAT number is not a failed check. It is issued separately from the registration number, there is no arithmetic between the two, and a company below the registration threshold will not have one at all.
5. Read the annual accounts
Maltese companies file an annual return and audited accounts with the MBR, and those filings are public — but they are not open data. Documents are ordered through the Registry's portal and charged per sheet. There is one exception, and it is free: companies listed on the Malta Stock Exchange publish their audited annual reports as regulated information, machine-readable, and those figures are on this site. For every other company you will have to order the filing. When you do, look at revenue, at the result for the period, and above all at equity: if it is negative, liabilities exceed assets.
The absence of accounts is itself a signal. Filing is a legal duty and a substantial share of Maltese companies do not comply — so a gap does not automatically mean trouble, but for a trading company that has filed nothing for years it is a question worth asking.
What it adds up to
No single one of these is a decision. Together they give a picture clear enough to decide whether to ask for payment up front, shorten the terms, or simply go ahead. All five are public and you need nobody's permission to look. Three of them — the register entry, the insolvency register and VIES — are also free; the directors and the accounts cost the price of the documents.