Kenya’s Business Registration Service (BRS) has quietly done away with physical certificates. If you registered a company and expected a printed document to show up somewhere, it’s not coming.
The certificate now lands in your email inbox, and if you miss it there, you can pull it from the BRS Version II portal on eCitizen.
This shift to digital certificates makes sense since it means less paper, fewer trips to Huduma Centers, and a faster path from registration to actually running a business. The certificate is legally valid in its digital form, so there’s nothing missing from the old physical version.
The bigger story, though, is the BRS Version II platform that launched on February 16. This is where things get more interesting for anyone who already has a company and needs to make changes to it.
The old process of updating company details, such as appointing a new director, transferring shares, or changing the company structure, required physical visits or manual submissions. The new platform handles all of that online.
All you need to do is log into eCitizen, head to the BRS section, and sign in using either your existing credentials or a one-time password. From there, you land on a personal account dashboard, switch into the relevant company profile, and start making changes.
The system lets you either pick from companies already linked to your account or search manually if the business isn’t showing up.
READ: Massive Data Breach Exposes Kenyan Companies Registration Information Online
One useful feature is that you can bundle multiple changes into a single application instead of filing separately for each one. So if a company is appointing a new director, removing an old one, and transferring shares all at once, that’s one submission rather than three.
The platform also accounts for the different legal routes companies might take to authorize changes. Depending on how a company is structured, changes can be authorized through a board resolution, a general meeting with a special resolution, or a Gazette notice. Each pathway has its steps built into the portal.
For share transfers specifically, the system guides users through the process of moving shares to either existing or new shareholders, with compliance checks built in before final submission.
