How to Verify an Argentine Supplier Before You Buy (CUIT, ARCA and Customs)

Short answer: before you pay an Argentine supplier, get its 11-digit tax ID (CUIT), look it up in ARCA's free public lookup and check that the legal name matches the quote, the invoice and the bank account. Then run three more free ARCA checks, ask for corporate documents, and pay only an account in the supplier's own name. Don't look for a customs "registered exporter" status: since December 2023 Argentina no longer requires one, so it proves little either way.

ARCA (Agencia de Recaudación y Control Aduanero) is Argentina's tax and customs agency, the former AFIP. Several of its lookups still run on afip.gob.ar addresses. They are official. If you would rather start from help checking a supplier, send a sourcing request.

Step 1: check the CUIT and the constancia de inscripción

The CUIT is the tax ID every Argentine company needs to invoice. Its registration record is called the constancia de inscripción, and anyone can look it up without an account in ARCA's public registration lookup. Type the 11 digits with no dashes and solve the captcha.

What to check:

• The name matches, letter for letter. The legal name in ARCA must be the name on the quote, the pro forma invoice, the contract and the bank account. Brand names are fine on a website. They are not fine on an invoice.
• The record exists and is current. A CUIT that returns nothing, or a different company, ends the conversation.
• It is a company when it claims to be one. A CUIT also exists for individuals. If a "corporation" sends you a person's CUIT, ask why.

Step 2: run ARCA's three other free checks

The same public area offers more lookups by CUIT, all free:

• Administrative status. Estados administrativos de la CUIT lets you check the administrative status ARCA assigns to the CUIT.
• Declared activities. ARCA's economic-activity lookup shows what the company declared it does. A sawmill selling timber makes sense. A software firm selling diesel does not.
• Apocryphal invoices. The e-Apoc database lists taxpayers whose invoices ARCA has classed as apocryphal. ARCA says the data is informative and preventive. Any hit is a reason to stop.

Once you receive an invoice, ARCA's invoice verification tool (constatación de comprobantes) lets the recipient confirm the invoice was authorised.

Is there an exporter registry to check?

No, and this catches out buyers who used checklists written before 2023. Article 92 of Argentina's Customs Code, as replaced by Decree 70/2023 (Official Gazette, 21 December 2023), says anyone may file customs declarations and trade internationally without registering in any registry. That is the consolidated text published by the Ministry of Justice. This concerns the general customs registry; it does not remove product-specific requirements, such as SENASA or INV registrations.

What the law still does, in Article 94, is bar some people and companies from importing or exporting: for example, those convicted of customs, tax or social-security offences, and companies declared bankrupt.

Since there is no registry, ask for evidence of real exports instead:

• The registration numbers of past export declarations (permisos de embarque) and the name of the customs broker who files them. Give them to your own broker or forwarder.
• Buyer references you can call, in countries you can check.
• For pallets and wood packaging, the SENASA code of the treatment centre. Look it up in SENASA's 2026 national register of authorised centres. The full export checklist is in how to import wood pallets and timber from Argentina.

Red flags: fuel, oil and gold

Fake offers cluster where cargoes are large and prices move fast. On our marketplace, fuel, oil and gold get extra checks for that reason. A typical warning comes from the storage operator VTTI. Its fraud alert says it is not involved in any business in "Jet Fuel 54" (JP54), that any document claiming otherwise is fraudulent, and that fraudsters seek up-front fees and use false paperwork.

The patterns to walk away from:

• A fee before anything ships: "procedure", "registration", "inspection" or "release" fees paid to the seller or an intermediary.
• Paperwork first, product later: letters of intent, "ICPO", "SGS on request" or tank-storage receipts in place of a pro forma invoice from a company with a CUIT.
• A price well below market, with pressure to close this week.
• A seller whose name, CUIT, email domain and bank account don't line up.
• A chain of mandates: "my principal's" product, never the producer's.

What to ask for before you pay

• The CUIT and the exact legal name, checked as above.
• The company's bylaws as registered with the corporate registry: the IGJ for Buenos Aires City, a provincial registry elsewhere.
• Proof that the person signing can bind the company, such as a board appointment or power of attorney.
• A pro forma invoice in the company's name with the full NCM tariff code, the Incoterm and the price.
• For plant products, confirmation that it will obtain the SENASA phytosanitary certificate your country requires.
• A signed contract. Argentina accepts electronic and digital signatures; see signing contracts in Argentina without paper.

Why you should never pay a third-party account

The company that invoices, the company on the export declaration and the account holder should be the same legal entity. A request to pay someone else breaks that chain. It might be a sister company, a "commercial agent", a personal account or a crypto wallet. If the goods never ship, your claim is against the company that invoiced you, and the money sits with someone else. It is a pattern worth investigating.

Use the legal name from ARCA as the beneficiary name on your transfer, and treat a late change of bank details as a red flag until you have confirmed it by phone with someone you already know. For moving money through Argentina's FX framework, see moving money in and out of Argentina.

How we verify suppliers

On the inteligenciar.com commodities marketplace, no company is marked verified until we check its CUIT and its ARCA registration; companies taken from official registries are shown as not yet verified. Fuel, oil and gold get extra checks. We never hold buyers' or suppliers' money: payments go directly between the companies, or through a licensed bank. We are opening with wood and forest products. Export rules keep changing, and our export tracker logs each change with its primary source.

This guide is general information, not legal advice. The lookups and rules were checked against the official pages linked above on 23 October 2026. ARCA's public tools change address from time to time; if a link fails, search for the tool's Spanish name on arca.gob.ar.