Domain checks for fraud & KYB
A domain a fraud model trusts can flip to a parking page the day after onboarding. Domain Research API gives you a live web-presence signal: send a merchant or applicant's domain and get back one status — developed, parked, for sale, available, or unreachable — checked live, never more than 15 minutes old. A parked or for-sale result on a domain that's supposed to be an operating business is exactly the signal cached enrichment feeds miss.
Where teams use it
Shell and transaction-laundering merchants hide behind a site that looks active. Flag merchants whose domain is parked, for sale, or no longer resolving — the web-presence signal fraud tools miss.
A business claims a website that was stood up an hour ago. Confirm the site it claims is a real, operating store before you approve it.
New, no-history domains are where phishing and mule infra activate first. Confirm the site is real and operating, and feed that alongside the age and history signals your model already has.
Typosquats and lookalike registrations pile up faster than anyone can open them — and most are dormant. Sweep the watchlist and see which lookalikes have actually stood up a site, so you chase the live ones first.
A feed hands you thousands of suspicious domains a day. Most are already dead or were never stood up. Triage by what is actually resolving and serving a site, before an analyst opens a single one.
You’re emailing, pitching, and scoring dead ends. Clean your list against what’s actually live — drop parked and abandoned domains.
Tracking status across a large portfolio by hand doesn’t scale. Check whether each domain is developed, parked, or listed for sale in one loop.
Budget gets routed to parked and placeholder pages. Screen domains for parked pages before you spend on traffic or partners.
How it fits a risk pipeline
One authenticated GET per domain, one status field back — no scraping, no page-parsing, no record model to interpret. Feed the status straight into your rules or scoring: treat a parked or for_sale merchant domain as a risk flag, and use a developed result to confirm the site is real and operating before your own age and history features weigh in. Because the check runs against the domain itself, it catches state changes since the last time you looked. Why live beats cached →
Common questions
How do I detect if a merchant's website is live and developed, for a fraud check?
Send the merchant's domain to Domain Research API and read the status back. A developed result means the domain is a live, real website; parked, for_sale, or unreachable flags a domain that isn't an active business site. Because the check runs against the domain itself and is never more than 15 minutes old, it catches a merchant domain that has flipped state since onboarding.
How do I verify a business's website is real, for KYB onboarding?
Call Domain Research API with the business's domain during onboarding. A developed status confirms the website is genuinely active at the moment you check; parked, for_sale, available, or unreachable tells you it isn't. It's one authenticated request per domain, for any TLD.