Billing country and company name validation

Updated 15 September 2026

Before the reverse charge is applied, you can ask the plugin for two extra checks. Both are only available when “Validate VAT Number + reverse charge VAT” is turned on in the settings of the EU VAT field.

Validate Billing Country

Tax authorities like to see that you know where your customer is located. With this setting on, three countries have to match before the reverse charge applies:

1. the country selected in the billing address,
2. the country of the VAT number, as VIES reports it,
3. the country of the IP address of your visitor.

The first check already happens in the browser: when the VAT number is not from the billing country, your customer sees “Billing country does not match the VAT number”. The other two are done on your server and show “Billing country mismatch.” when they fail. The country of the IP address is looked up in a database that comes with the plugin, so no visitor data leaves your website.

Validate Company Name

Turn on “Validate Company Name” and select the text field where your customer enters the company name under “Select company name field”. When your customer presses Validate, the name they entered is compared with the company name in VIES. Upper and lower case don’t matter, but the rest has to be exactly the same, including the legal form like “B.V.” or “GmbH”.

When the field is empty your customer sees “No company name entered”; when the name doesn’t match, “Company name mismatch.”.