How to screen registrations for B2B customers only?

[Joachim Sandstrom]

Our market segment will be businesses (B2B). We do not want to mess with an occasional European consumer's EU VAT procedures.

To our knowledge, there is no way to configure IPB to just accept registrations by B2B customers, i.e. customers having a valid VAT number. The B2C option is even the default option, causing us a potential administrative VAT mess.

We have a few ideas of screening options, like adding a custom field asking if the registrant has chosen "Business" and added its VAT number. Or, by adding a second VAT field and asking for a repeated input, where it might then be possible to check for a null value using an Anti-fraud rule. But rather clumsy, far from non-waterproof solutions thought. 

We think there might be more graceful options in the hands of all of the skilled community builders like you.

All proposals are very welcome! 

Edited March 12, 2022 by Joachim Sandstrom

[Jim M]

I have moved this to our community support forum for further input...

[Daniel F]

You could use a simple plugin which adds a VAT field to the registration form and which validates the data agains an API like https://vatlayer.com or https://www.isvat.eu

[Joachim Sandstrom]

Hi Daniel.

Thanks for your answer.

What you propose is what we thought already existed in the stock registration form. A VAT number field that is checked against the EU VAT number register (if configurated for EU VAT in the ACP).

So a couple of questions 
1) Could you please clarify the difference between the stock VAT functionality and what you propose?
2) How does your proposal mitigate consumers registering as "Consumer", thereby not being objects of any VAT number checks? 

Have a nice evening!

/Joachim