How to register a Pty Ltd on CIPC: the full process and costs

What you need before you start

BizPortal (bizportal.gov.za) is CIPC's own free registration platform, and it's what we used. You'll need a South African ID number to log in, so a foreign national without one has to register through a CIPC-accredited agent instead, at extra cost. Beyond that, have ready:

• Each director's ID number, ready for CIPC's real-time verification against Home Affairs
• A cellphone number and email address for OTP verification during the session
• A physical street address for the registered office, not a PO Box
• A card or EFT for the registration fee

You'll also be asked whether to accept the standard Memorandum of Incorporation (MOI) or file a custom one. Accept the standard one unless you already have a specific reason not to, for example multiple shareholders with unusual voting or transfer arrangements. A custom MOI (CoR15.1B) costs an extra R400 and needs manual CIPC processing rather than the instant approval BizPortal otherwise gives you. We used the standard MOI, which is the right default for almost every one to ten person business.

The name decision: R125 or R175, and why we did both

This is the fork most guides gloss over, and it's the one we got wrong at first. BizPortal gives you two paths:

• Register without a name for R125. CIPC assigns your registration number as the company's legal name (something like "2025/123456/07 (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd") and you're trading, legally, the same day.
• Reserve a name first, then register, for R175 total (R50 name reservation plus the R125 registration). You submit up to four names in order of preference; once one is approved, it's held for six months while you register the company under it.

We hadn't settled on "ShellRick Tech" yet when we registered, so we took the R125 route and registered without a name. A few weeks later, once we'd actually decided on the name, we went back and filed a separate name reservation, then a name change, to get from the registration-number name to ShellRick Tech (Pty) Ltd. It worked, and CIPC doesn't charge extra for doing it in two trips rather than one. But if you already know your name when you start, doing it in the same R175 session up front saves you a second round of forms and waiting for OTPs later.

The registration itself, step by step

1. Log into BizPortal with your SA ID and verify via OTP.
2. Choose Private Company (Pty) Ltd as the entity type.
3. Decide on the name path above, and submit your preferred names if reserving one.
4. Enter each director's ID for CIPC's live Home Affairs check. A mismatch here (a typo, an expired ID) is the most common reason registration stalls.
5. Enter the registered physical address.
6. Accept the standard MOI, or opt into a custom one if you actually need it.
7. Pay the fee, R125 or R175, by card or EFT within five days of starting the application.

Most BizPortal registrations with clean, matching director details come back the same day. CIPC quotes up to seven business days as the outer bound, but ours came through within hours. Once approved, you download the CoR14.3 registration certificate directly from the portal. It has your registration number, incorporation date, registered address, and company name on it, and it's the document every bank and client will ask you for next.

The bank account mix-up nobody warns you about

Here's the part of our own registration that actually cost us time. We opened our business bank account using the CoR14.3 we had at that point, which still showed the registration-number name, not ShellRick Tech. The bank opened the account correctly against that certificate. Later, once our name change to ShellRick Tech (Pty) Ltd went through at CIPC, the bank account itself didn't update automatically. It's still sitting under the company number, not the trading name, because updating it meant going back to the bank with the new CoR14.3 ourselves, a step we hadn't planned for and haven't gotten around to finishing.

If you're taking the same route we did, register without a name first, decide on the name later, the practical fix is to hold off opening your bank account until the name change has actually gone through, or accept that you'll need a follow-up trip to the bank with your updated CoR14.3 once it does. Either is fine. What isn't fine is assuming the bank will pick up a CIPC name change on its own, because it won't.

We also noticed a difference in how fast different kinds of verification move once you're through registration. CIPC's own electronic lookups, the kind a bank or a payment provider runs to confirm your registration number and details are real, come back almost instantly. Bank-side verification for some services still has to be done manually, and we've seen that take up to three working days when registering with certain providers. Budget for that gap if you're trying to get a payment gateway or business account live on a deadline.

What starts the moment you're registered

Your incorporation date on the CoR14.3, not the date you eventually settle your name or open your bank account, is the date that matters for CIPC compliance going forward. It sets the anniversary your Annual Return and Beneficial Ownership filing are due around every year, a deadline that runs independently of your financial year end and catches a lot of first-time directors off guard. We wrote about how that deadline actually works, and why it's easy to miss, in a separate article on Beneficial Ownership and Annual Returns. If you'd rather not track that date on a calendar reminder that's easy to ignore, our Compliance Calendar picks it up automatically once you enter your registration date in Settings, and surfaces it grouped by urgency alongside your VAT and provisional tax deadlines.

Sources

• ↗CIPC BizPortal
• ↗CIPC: Company Registration Fees
• ↗Companies Act 71 of 2008

Disclaimer: This article describes our own experience registering on CIPC BizPortal and does not constitute legal or company secretarial advice. Fees, processing times, and portal steps can change. Confirm current requirements directly with CIPC or a registered company secretary before registering.