CHALLENGE

Scaling to self-service checkout required faster tax ID validation

Wellhub is a global corporate wellness platform operating across multiple continents. In 2022, the company had an ambitious growth plan: launch self-service checkout on their website to radically accelerate customer acquisition.

Instead of every sale requiring a one-on-one conversation with a sales executive, companies could sign up directly online. This would unlock exponential growth. But it created a critical infrastructure gap: automated, real-time tax ID validation that worked globally.

We were thinking about scaling our sales process with a self-checkout flow where companies go to the website, put in their information, and we finish the sales process right there. If you're gonna scale, this validation must be scaled as well.
—Renan Bastazini, Staff Technical Program Manager

Wellhub's existing approach to validate tax IDs was manual. Outside Brazil, they asked clients for official company certificates from their government. Even with dedicated sales executives handling validation, invalid tax IDs could slip through, triggering support tickets and billing complications.

Innacurrate data and tax IDs cost us time and money to resolve, even with sales executives doing one-on-one talks with clients. So imagine in a scalable process where leads are filling their tax IDs in our forms. How can we scale our sales flow but not scale the current issues?
—Renan Bastazini

Wellhub needed automated tax ID validation infrastructure across all their markets to ensure their self-service checkout could grow their business—without growing support tickets and invoice issues.

SOLUTION

API-first validation with fast response times and global coverage

After evaluating multiple vendors, Wellhub selected Fonoa's Lookup solution for three critical reasons:

API-first architecture: Wellhub needed programmatic validation, not a manual platform where someone types in IDs one by one.

When we talk about scaling, we want to automatically trigger an API to see if the tax ID is valid or not. Fonoa’s API was a huge differentiator.
—Renan Bastazini

Fast processing time: In a self-service checkout flow, every second matters. Leads won't wait for slow validation.

This is a self-service flow on the website, so we can't have our leads waiting too long. We need a really fast response time. We compared with other vendors, and Fonoa’s API was the fastest.
—Renan Bastazini

Global coverage: Lookup supports data validation in 115+ countries, which includes key regions where Wellhub operates, eliminating the need for multiple regional vendors.

Wellhub implemented Fonoa in two phases:

1. Website self-checkout flow: Built an internal service to call Fonoa's API during the B2B signup process
2. Salesforce integration: Extended the same framework to validate tax IDs when sales executives manually create opportunities

For the Salesforce implementation, Wellhub now holds sales unless the tax ID is not only filled in, but validated as existing and active.

Before Fonoa, the sales executive could fill whatever number they wanted and we could only validate the number format. But now, we can check if it really exists and if it's active.
—Renan Bastazini

Throughout implementation, Fonoa's team helped Wellhub understand exactly which response fields to use. This ensures they captured not just existence, but active status in each country.

OUTCOME

33% fewer validation-related customer support tickets and tax validation as a market expansion prerequisite

Since adopting Fonoa, Wellhub has transformed tax ID validation from a manual bottleneck into an automated competitive advantage. The platform now validates IDs in real time across 11 countries.

Tax IDs are one of the most sensitive pieces of information our master data team deals with, and resolving support tickets can be very time consuming. With Fonoa, we see 33% fewer tax ID tickets—the time savings speaks for itself.
—Renan Bastazini, Staff Technical Program Manager

Key outcomes include:

• 15% of all tax IDs caught as invalid and blocked before billing every year, preventing downstream revenue collection issues
• 33% reduction in tax ID validation-related customer support tickets sent to the master data team, who previously had to manually verify IDs and request company certificates from clients
• Enabled expansion to Portugal and Canada in 2025, with tax ID validation as a prerequisite for market entry
• Dual implementation across both self-service website checkout and Salesforce sales workflows, ensuring every client is validated regardless of how they enter the system

Tax ID validation has become so critical to Wellhub's expansion strategy that it's now a standard requirement for entering any new market.

When we want to think about expanding to new markets, we are always using tax ID validation as a precondition before expanding. We check Fonoa's website to confirm they do validation in that country. We do all the testing, and once the response gives us the okay, we can go on with expansion.
—Renan Bastazini

WHAT'S NEXT

Tax validation as the foundation for continued global expansion

As Wellhub continues to expand into new markets globally, Fonoa's tax ID validation has become a foundational capability that enables the company to move fast without creating operational debt.

For companies operating in global markets across different countries, it's way better and way easier to use a single solution that will serve different markets than use specific different vendors for each market.
—Renan Bastazini

With validation automated and support tickets reduced, Wellhub's teams can focus on growth instead of manual data cleanup.