What is “VZW”?
VZW stands for Vereniging zonder winstoogmerk (Dutch), a nonprofit organization used primarily in Belgium. The suffix signals that the business has limited liability and is privately held.
Full meaning & translation
The full form is Vereniging zonder winstoogmerk, a Dutch-language term. It translates literally as “Association without profit motive.” You may also encounter it abbreviated or written as vereniging zonder winstoogmerk.
Where it's used
VZW appears in company names registered in the following jurisdiction:
What it tells you about the company
Equivalent forms around the world
These are the closest structural equivalents to VZW in other jurisdictions — same entity category, different national law.
Normalizing “VZW” in your data
When matching or deduplicating company records, the legal suffix is noise — “Acme VZW” and “Acme” should resolve to the same entity. One API call strips it and returns a stable canonical form:
curl -X POST https://api.ambect.com/v1/normalize/company \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $AMBECT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"name": "Acme VZW", "country": "be"}'{
"data": {
"canonical": "acme vzw",
"legal_type": null,
"tokens": [
"acme",
"vzw"
]
},
"meta": {
"pipeline": [
"lowercase",
"legal_suffix"
],
"confidence": 0.99
}
}Frequently asked questions
What does VZW stand for?
VZW stands for Vereniging zonder winstoogmerk (Dutch), which translates as "Association without profit motive".
Is a VZW public or private?
A VZW is a private entity — its shares are not publicly listed or traded on a stock exchange.
What is the liability in a VZW?
Owners of a VZW have limited liability. Their personal assets are protected, and their exposure is capped at the amount they invested.
Which countries use VZW?
VZW is used in Belgium.
Need to normalize VZW at scale? The Ambect API handles it across 100+ countries in under 5 ms.
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