Visa intermediaries are a legitimate industry. Many are competent, licensed and useful, particularly where an application is complex. The difficulty is that the market also contains operators whose model depends on fees collected before anything is submitted — and from the outside, on a website, the two look identical.

These four checks separate them, and none takes long.

1. Find the licence, not the website

Any agency operating legally in a regulated market holds a trade licence or equivalent registration. Ask for the number and verify it with the issuing authority directly, rather than accepting a certificate image. In the UAE that means the relevant Emirate's economic development department or the free-zone authority named on the licence. Elsewhere it means the national companies registry or the tourism regulator.

What you are checking is not merely that a licence exists, but that the licensed activity covers what they are selling you and that the company name matches exactly. A licence for general trading does not authorise immigration consultancy.

2. Match the bank account to the licence

The account you are asked to pay must be in the licensed company's name. A payment request to an individual's personal account, to a differently named company, or to an account in another country is the single strongest warning sign in this entire category. It is also the detail that makes recovery hardest afterwards, because the money has left the corporate structure you had any claim against.

3. Compare against the published official fee

Governments publish visa fees. Find the official figure on the immigration authority's own website before discussing price. A service fee on top of the official fee is entirely legitimate — that is what an agency is for. What matters is that you can see which part of the quote is the government fee and which is the agency's margin.

Where a quote cannot be broken down that way, or where 'mandatory insurance' and 'processing charges' appear only after you have paid, you are looking at a pattern that recurs consistently in complaints.

4. Pay by card

Card payments carry chargeback rights. Bank transfers and instant payments generally do not, and cash and cryptocurrency certainly do not. An agency that accepts cards for some customers but asks you specifically for a transfer is worth questioning. The cost difference is small; the difference in what you can do afterwards is enormous.

Two more things worth doing

  • Get the refund policy in writing before paying, including the exact deduction percentage and the point at which the fee becomes non-refundable.
  • Ask what the official application reference number will be and when you will receive it. A genuine submission produces one.

None of this guarantees a good outcome. It does mean that if something goes wrong you will know who you contracted with, which regulator licenses them, and which dispute route is available to you — and that is most of what determines whether a case is recoverable.