Business Search Prefill

Overview

Business Search Prefill (Business Search) is used in KYB to help an end user find their business in registry and vendor data and auto-fill its details into your Inquiry, instead of asking them to type company information from memory.

Customers use Business Search Prefill to:

Reduce drop-off during business onboarding

Typing a legal business name, registration number, and address correctly is slow and error-prone, especially on mobile. Business Search Prefill lets the end user search by name (or registration number) and country, pick their business from a short list of matches, and have Persona fill in the rest — cutting the number of fields they have to type by hand.

Improve the accuracy of data entering KYB

Because the filled-in values come from an authoritative registry or vendor record rather than free text, they arrive already normalized and correctly formatted, which reduces the mismatches that can cause a downstream Business Registry Verification to fail on formatting alone.

Set a foundation for global KYB

Business Search Prefill is typically the first step in a KYB Inquiry, run before verifications like the Business Registry Verification and enrichment reports like the Business Registrations Report or Business Associated Persons Report.

Where to find it

Business Search is a screen component in the Inquiry Builder. Navigate to Dashboard > Inquiries > Templates, open a template, and add Business Search from the Component Library on a screen. Configure which Inquiry fields the selected candidate’s business name, entity type, registration number, addresses, phone numbers, and associated persons (where available) should be written to.

How Business Search Prefill works

The end user enters a business name (or registration number) and country. Street, city, subdivision, and postal code can optionally be collected to narrow the search — recommended in the US, where a name alone is often not enough to disambiguate.
Persona searches registry and vendor data for that country and returns a short ranked list of candidate businesses, typically up to five.
The end user selects the business that matches theirs. Persona writes that candidate’s fields into the Inquiry fields you configured.
If none of the candidates match, or the search returns no results, the end user can skip the step and enter their business information manually — Business Search Prefill never blocks completion of the Inquiry.

The displayed registration number is partially masked until a candidate is selected. Business Search Prefill is a selection aid, not a verification, so it does not return a pass or fail result — pair it with the Business Registry Verification when you need a verified outcome.

Coverage and match quality vary by country — Business Search Prefill draws from different registries and vendors depending on where the business is registered. In the US, it also returns the business’s Employer Identification Number (EIN) when available — a field the Business Registry Verification does not surface. Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) data is not yet returned by Business Search Prefill.

Using Business Search Prefill via API

Business Search Prefill also has an API version — the Business Search report — for customers who own their own onboarding UI and want to call Persona’s business search purely as a data source, without rendering a Persona-hosted Inquiry. It runs the same search and returns the same ranked candidate list as JSON; your application decides how to present the choice and prefill your own form.

The API version is in Closed Beta and not yet generally available. To request access, reach out to our support team.

If you need further assistance, reach out to our support team.

Getting started

Business Search Prefill is currently in beta. To add it to an Inquiry template, or to request access to the Business Search API, reach out to our support team.

If you need further assistance, reach out to our support team.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Business Search Prefill verify the business?

No. Business Search Prefill returns a ranked list of possible matches so the end user can disambiguate their own business; it does not return a pass or fail result. Use the Business Registry Verification when you need a verified outcome.

What happens if an end user’s business isn’t in the results?

They can skip the step and enter their business information manually. Business Search Prefill never blocks the end user from completing the Inquiry.

Does Business Search Prefill return Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) information?

Not yet. UBO / associated-persons data is on the roadmap but not returned by Business Search Prefill today. Ask your Persona account team about the Business Associated Persons Report for UBO enrichment on US and UK businesses.

Is Business Search Prefill the same as the Business Search API?

They share the same underlying search engine and data sources. The Inquiry component is the hosted-UI surface that writes the selected match into your Inquiry form; the API returns the same candidate list as JSON so you can prefill your own form outside of a Persona Inquiry.

Plans Explained