Verify a Business Sender
Status: Planned
Verify a Business Sender
Section titled “Verify a Business Sender”The question: “This business message claims to come from Company X. Do we have evidence it came from an authorized actor for that legal entity, and has the content changed?”
This is the first OPTEROM Network verification use case. The consumer can be an independent procurement application, accounting tool, email-adjacent product or business AI assistant. It should not need to adopt an OPTEROM portal or run its own network infrastructure.
Example: a buyer receives a quotation
Section titled “Example: a buyer receives a quotation”A Finnish buyer receives an electronic quotation from an unfamiliar supplier. The visible company name and the signer’s email address look plausible, but the buyer’s existing system needs stronger evidence before it creates a purchase order.
A compatible verification experience would:
- Identify the company. Resolve the asserted sender to the relevant legal entity, jurisdiction and available source records.
- Inspect the authority. Identify who signed the specific quotation and whether the signer had relevant company-granted authority at the signing time.
- Check message integrity. Verify the signed quotation or its agreed canonical digest against the received content.
- Inspect changes. Report expirations, revocations, corrections and any difference between signing-time and present-time status.
- Return the evidence. Provide structured results and relevant sources, so the buying software can decide what to do next.
What the buyer should see
Section titled “What the buyer should see”A useful response should distinguish these outcomes:
| Result | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Verified identity and authorized sender | The checked evidence supports the claimed legal entity, relevant authority and unchanged message |
| Valid signature, insufficient company authority | The signature may be authentic, but authorization to represent the company was not established |
| Altered or unverifiable message | The received bytes or document digest could not be validated against the purported action |
| Expired, revoked or superseded evidence | A previously issued claim or permission is no longer current, or has been replaced |
| Inconclusive | Required evidence is missing, stale or cannot be resolved |
Inconclusive is not the same as fraudulent. The outcome must not invent confidence or conceal which checks were unavailable.
What this verification proves—and what it doesn’t
Section titled “What this verification proves—and what it doesn’t”It can establish the provenance and integrity of a particular attributed action, within its available sources and authorization rules. It cannot guarantee that the supplier will deliver, that prices are fair, that a shipment exists or that the sender’s statements are truthful.
This distinction is deliberate. A product that helps users evaluate evidence can be more valuable than a simple “trusted” label whose meaning is unclear.
Why an external application would use OPTEROM
Section titled “Why an external application would use OPTEROM”The application can focus on the workflow it already owns—procurement, invoicing, document intake or agent work—while connecting to a common verification model across participating jurisdictions and business systems.
OPTEROM aims to make company identity, authority and evidence portable between applications, not locked to a single website.
See Developer Verification Guide for verification semantics and Availability for capability status.