VAT Validation for Adyen Merchants: How to Handle B2B VAT Compliance

Adyen is one of Europe's largest payment platforms, serving enterprise merchants across the globe. If you use Adyen for B2B payments, you need to validate customer VAT numbers for reverse charge compliance. Adyen does not provide this.

What Adyen does and doesn't do for VAT

Adyen processes payments. It does not validate customer tax IDs, calculate VAT, or automate the reverse charge mechanism.

• Adyen's Legal Entity Management API handles VAT numbers for sub-merchant onboarding (KYC), but this is not available for validating your end customers' VAT numbers
• Adyen's tax-free shopping feature (partnership with Global Blue) is for in-store retail VAT refunds, not B2B VAT validation
• Adyen's documentation has no mention of VIES integration, customer VAT validation APIs, or reverse charge automation for merchants

Adding VAT validation to your Adyen integration

Validate the customer's VAT number before processing the Adyen payment. Use the result to determine VAT treatment (reverse charge or charge VAT), then store the result for audit purposes.

import Vatly from "@vatly/node";

const vatly = new Vatly("vtly_live_your_api_key");

const { data, error } = await vatly.vat.validate({
  vatNumber: customer.vatNumber,
});

// Use the result to set VAT treatment before creating the Adyen payment
const vatAmount = data?.valid
  ? 0
  : calculateVat(orderTotal, customerCountry);

Enterprise reliability

Adyen merchants typically process high volumes. VAT validation needs to be reliable at scale.

• Caching: Vatly caches results for 25 days. Repeat lookups for the same number resolve in under 50ms.
• Retries: Automatic retries with backoff when VIES or HMRC is down.
• Stale fallback: If a country's tax service is offline and no fresh result is available, Vatly returns the last known result with a stale indicator so your checkout flow doesn't break.
• Rate limits: Scale with your plan. 120 requests per minute on the Business tier.
• Batch validation: Process up to 50 numbers in a single request on Pro and Business plans.

See the pricing page for plan details and rate limits.

Get started

Vatly's free tier includes 500 validations per month with no credit card required. Add VAT validation to your Adyen integration in under 5 minutes.

Start validating for free →

Read the API documentation for integration details.