# Detect tampered and deepfake Trade License > Trade licence forgeries are caught in the parts a municipality controls: the licence number format, the activity it actually authorises, and the validity period. A trade licence is municipal permission to run a named business at a named address, so the edits worth making widen the permitted category into something the holder was never approved for, such as food handling or fuel, or push a lapsed licence forward another year. It is the document merchants most often present after it has expired. **Canonical URL:** https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/trade_license **API document class:** `trade_license` **Last updated:** 2026-10-07 --- ## What a genuine trade license contains A trade licence names the issuing municipality or corporation and often the ward, then gives the licence number, the trade name, the licensee, and the address of the premises the licence attaches to. The permitted business category or activity code is stated explicitly, along with the measure the fee was assessed on, usually floor area or number of workers. Below that sit the fee paid and its receipt number, the date of issue, the valid-from and valid-to dates, any conditions endorsed by the health or licensing officer, that officer's signature, and the municipality's embossed seal. The fee is the number that keeps the rest honest. It is calculated from the permitted category and the size of the premises, so widening the activity or shrinking the floor area leaves an amount that no longer corresponds to either. The licence number encodes the ward and the year it was issued in, validity runs a fixed term from issue and usually ends with the municipal financial year, and renewal endorsements are applied in sequence. A category changed after issue contradicts the receipt that paid for it. ## How trade license forgeries are made ### Category widening The permitted activity is rewritten so a licence granted for general retail appears to cover food preparation, alcohol, or another category requiring separate inspection. The fee printed below it stays where it was, which is what gives the edit away when anyone reads the two fields together. ### Validity extension The valid-to date is moved forward, or a renewal endorsement is added, so a lapsed licence reads as current. Merchants present expired licences more often than fabricated ones, and this single-digit edit converts a genuine but dead document into an acceptable one. ### Premises substitution The address is changed so a licence issued for one shop covers a different location, frequently one operating in a zone where that trade is not permitted. Since the licence attaches to premises rather than to a person, this is the edit that defeats the entire purpose of the instrument. ### Licensee name change The holder's name is replaced when a business changes hands without going through transfer approval. The new name typically sits on a line whose text rendering differs measurably from the trade name printed immediately above it. ### Officer signature and municipal seal reproduction The licensing officer's signature and the corporation seal are scanned from a genuine licence and reapplied. An embossed municipal seal has depth and casts shading across its relief; a reproduced one prints flat, with the shading baked into the image as fixed pixels. ### Licences for municipalities nobody has seen Formats vary by city, so a reviewer in one place rarely knows what another's licence should look like. Entirely invented licences exploit that gap, and are identified through print and substrate characteristics rather than by comparison against a layout. ## What TamperCheck checks on a trade license TamperCheck runs 200+ forensic checks across three layers and returns a risk score from 0 to 100 with plain-English findings tied to specific regions of the document. These three carry the most weight on this document class. ### Embossed seal analysis A physically embossed seal deforms the paper it sits on. A seal that was scanned and reprinted is flat, and the two separate cleanly under analysis even when they are hard to tell apart by eye. ### Date and validity consistency Issue, expiry, and period dates are checked against one another and against the file's own creation metadata, which catches backdating and validity extension. ### Field-level forensics Every text region is analysed in its own right rather than as part of one whole-page image. This catches the smoothed and feathered edits that whole-image Error Level Analysis misses entirely. ### And many more checks The three above are the layers that carry the most weight on a trade license. Every upload runs the full suite of 200+ checks regardless of document class, spanning file structure and metadata, pixel-level forensics, font and text rendering, optical and print characteristics, provenance signals, AI-generation signatures, and many more checks. ## Who verifies a trade license, and why Banks, marketplaces, and payment providers onboarding merchants. In each case the document is being used to unlock money, access, or a legal status, which is exactly what makes it worth forging. ## How to verify a trade license in 4 steps 1. **Check the fields against each other.** Read licence number, permitted activity, and validity period together rather than one at a time. Forgers typically change one value and leave the rest of the document describing the original. 2. **Inspect the file metadata.** Open the document properties and look at the producer, creation date, and modification date. A document produced by a consumer PDF editor, or created long after the date printed on its face, is worth a closer look. 3. **Ask for a second document.** Request a corroborating document from the same issuer or an adjacent period. Forgery effort concentrates on one file, so inconsistencies surface as soon as there are two to compare. 4. **Run a forensic check.** Manual review catches obvious edits but not field-level pixel manipulation or synthetic generation. TamperCheck runs 200+ forensic checks on a trade license and returns a risk score from 0 to 100 within seconds, at $0.50 per document. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do I verify a trade licence? Start with the municipality named on it: most corporations publish a licence search where the number returns the trade name, category, premises, and current validity. Compare all four against the document. Then check that the fee and receipt number are consistent with the category and premises size claimed, and that the seal is impressed into the paper rather than printed onto it. ### Can a trade licence be faked? Yes, and it is among the easier KYB documents to fake, because formats differ between every municipality and few reviewers know what any given city's licence should look like. Most forgeries are not fabrications at all but genuine licences with the expiry date extended or the permitted category widened, both of which leave the rest of the document untouched. ### What is the difference between a trade licence and a business registration certificate? A registration certificate proves the entity exists as a legal person; a trade licence proves a municipality has permitted that entity to carry on a specific activity at a specific address. One is issued once by a company registry, the other is issued annually by a local authority and attaches to premises, which is why a licence is worthless if the address on it is not the address being traded from. ### How long is a trade licence valid? Most run for one year and expire at the end of the municipal financial year rather than a year from the date of issue, which is why the valid-to date on a genuine licence is usually a fixed calendar date. A licence whose expiry sits exactly twelve months after its issue date is worth a second look in jurisdictions that work to a fixed year end. ## Related document types - Articles of Incorporation: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/articles_of_incorporation - Business Registration: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/business_registration - Company Extract: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/company_extract - Board Resolution: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/board_resolution - GST Certificate: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/gst_certificate - Registration Certificate: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/registration_certificate --- Try TamperCheck now: https://tampercheck.ai/dashboard · Docs: https://tampercheck.ai/docs · Pricing: https://tampercheck.ai/pricing