How to Search GCIS for Free: Taiwan Company Registry Data

Taiwan's company registry data is, on paper, the most open in Asia. The Ministry of Economic Affairs operates a public free-search portal at findbiz.nat.gov.tw, exposes the same data through an open-data REST API at data.gcis.nat.gov.tw with hourly updates, and licenses everything under the Open Government Data Licence — meaning commercial reuse with attribution is permitted by default.

The catch: Taiwan is a single jurisdiction with at least five different layers of company data across four authorities (MOEA Administration of Commerce, the Financial Supervisory Commission, the Ministry of Finance, and the Taiwan Depository & Clearing Corporation), all of which use the same 8-character Unified Business Number as the join key — but each holding different data. And the beneficial-ownership layer that does exist (10% shareholder filings under the 2018 Company Act) is held internally by the MOEA and is not public, contrary to FATF mutual-evaluation expectations.

This guide explains what data lives where, how to use the free APIs, what changed when the Money Laundering Control Act was amended on 31 July 2024, and where Zephira fits — joining all four sources into a single English-language profile, sourced directly from Taiwan government records, with no aggregator middlemen. For the equivalent guides covering other jurisdictions, see Ireland, China, and Singapore.

First, who actually owns this data?

Four authorities hold the four operational layers of Taiwanese company data. They all reference entities by the same 8-digit Unified Business Number, but each one exposes different fields.

Most analyses of "Taiwan company data" only look at the MOEA registry. That's a mistake — MOEA covers the surface (legal identity, capital, basic compliance), but the substance (financial-services licensing, tax compliance, listed-company disclosures) is split across the other three. A complete profile needs all four sources joined.

Every Taiwan company-data dataset, mapped

Eleven distinct datasets exist across the four authorities, each with its own access regime. The split:

Field by field — exactly what's free vs paid vs restricted

The dataset table above shows where each layer lives. Below is the same data viewed by individual data point — what you actually get for free, what costs money, and what stays closed.

The Unified Business Number — Taiwan's identifier

Every Taiwan-registered entity has a Unified Business Number (統一編號, UBN) — an 8-digit identifier issued at registration. Unlike China's 18-character USCC or Singapore's 9-character UEN, Taiwan's UBN is short and numeric, making it easy to remember and validate. Critically, it is the only identifier — the same number serves as:

• Company registration number (MOEA filing)
• Business tax identification number (MOF filing)
• Customs identification number (cross-border trade)
• Bank KYC reference (account opening)
• e-invoice (e-fapiao) issuer reference

The 8 digits include a check digit calculated using a weighted modulus algorithm. Practical implication for KYB: a counterparty's UBN should match exactly across the business licence, GCIS record, e-fapiao, and bank documentation. Mismatches are the single most reliable indicator of fraud or document forgery.

findbiz — what's there, what's free

The MOEA's public search portal at findbiz.nat.gov.tw is the official starting point for any Taiwan company verification. The portal supports search by:

• Company name (Chinese, English where filed, or partial match)
• Unified Business Number
• Factory Registration Number (for manufacturing entities)
• Company representative's name
• Director / supervisor / managerial officer name
• Foreign company name as specified in its charter
• Cross-domain search across multiple government agencies

For each company, the free portal returns:

• Basic registration: UBN, legal name (Chinese + any registered English name), status (Approved · Withdrawn · Dissolved · Liquidating), registration date, paid-in capital, registered office
• Business scope: coded business activity classifications (similar to NACE / NAICS)
• Officers: chairperson, directors, supervisors, key managers
• Capital: paid-in capital amount and currency (typically NT$)
• Foreign investment: whether the company is foreign-invested or PRC-invested (recognized separately)

The portal has a passable English interface, though some detail pages remain in Chinese only. For machine-readable access, the same data is exposed through the GCIS Open Data API.

The GCIS Open Data API — Taiwan's standout feature

Taiwan's open-data infrastructure for company registry information is genuinely best-in-class for Asia. The MOEA exposes its full registry through the GCIS Open Data API at data.gcis.nat.gov.tw, with three properties that make it materially more useful than peers:

• Free, no licence agreement required. Open Government Data Licence v1.0 — commercial reuse permitted with attribution.
• Hourly update cadence. Faster than China's GSXT (daily), Singapore's Bizfile (real-time but per-record paid), or Ireland's data.gov.ie open dataset (daily snapshot).
• Multiple endpoints. Search by company name keyword, lookup by UBN, monthly bulk lists of newly registered companies, monthly bulk lists of dissolved companies, capital change records.

The API documentation is published as OpenAPI Specification at data.gcis.nat.gov.tw/resources/swagger/index.html. Rate limits apply but are not aggressively enforced for legitimate KYB use.

The 10% Shareholder filing regime

Taiwan does not have a beneficial ownership register in the EU/UK/Singapore sense. Instead, it has a 10% Shareholder filing obligation introduced by the 2018 amendments to the Company Act. The architecture:

Taiwan entity types — what each one means for KYB

The MOEA registry recognises five common entity types. Each carries different liability characteristics and disclosure requirements.

NT$500 million paid-in capital is the jurisdictional threshold that determines which authority handles registration. Companies with paid-in capital above NT$500 million register centrally with the MOEA Administration of Commerce in Taipei. Companies below that threshold register with the local city or county government office where the registered office is located. Both filings flow into the same GCIS database, so this distinction matters more for filing logistics than for data access.

Where Zephira sources Taiwan data from — directly

The single most important question to ask any provider of Taiwan company data is who is your source. Zephira goes direct: every Taiwan record is sourced from the official government registry that owns it, with the source attribution visible on every profile.

Every record on the platform carries a Data Provenance panel naming the specific government source the record was pulled from, with the timestamp of the last refresh. The panel is visible on the free profile view and in the API response (data_provenance field). The 10% Shareholder data is not exposed via Zephira — that database is closed by Taiwan law to law enforcement only.

Registry verification is not the whole KYB picture — Cross-Strait risks

For any Western team running KYB on a Taiwan counterparty in 2026, registry data is the first check, not the only one. Taiwan's geopolitical position means a complete workflow has to combine GCIS verification with parallel sanctions and trade-control screening across multiple regimes that intersect on Taiwan:

• US Entity List (Bureau of Industry and Security) — restricts exports of US-origin technology and components, including semiconductors, to listed entities. Some Taiwan companies have been added through PRC-affiliated parent or subsidiary relationships.
• UFLPA Entity List (Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act) — relevant where a Taiwan supplier has manufacturing or sourcing in Xinjiang or with affiliated PRC entities. Automatic detentions for goods from listed entities at US ports.
• OFAC SDN and CMIC list (Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies List) — affects Taiwan suppliers with PRC military-industrial linkages.
• Export controls on advanced semiconductors — the BIS October 2022 and follow-on rules restrict transfer of advanced node fab equipment, EDA tools, and certain AI chips. Taiwan companies including TSMC operate under specific compliance frameworks for this.
• EU restrictive measures and UK OFSI consolidated list — broader sanctions regimes that touch Taiwan via cross-border supply chains.

The operational reality: a Taiwan entity with clean GCIS records, paid-up capital, and current MOEA filings can still be on the Entity List. PRC-invested companies operating in Taiwan are flagged separately on GCIS — the foreign-investment flag (especially the PRC-invested distinction) is a critical first-pass risk indicator. For full enterprise KYB, registry verification and sanctions screening run on parallel axes, and missing the second is the single most common compliance failure for Western teams onboarding Taiwan suppliers. Zephira's enterprise plans integrate continuous sanctions screening alongside registry data; the free search returns registry data only.

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