ICANN’s New Transfer Policy comes into effect from the beginning of next month setting out new rules regarding changing or updating a domain name’s registrant contact information. In this blog article, we take a look at what this means for WHMCS users.
What is the New Transfer Policy?
The Transfer Policy, formerly known as “Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy” or IRTP, sets out how domain transfers should be handled. Up until now, this policy only covered domain transfers between registrars. From December 1st, this will also cover the process of changing ownership of a domain from one registrant to another.
What is the impact of this change?
What this means is that when a registrant performs an update to the registered name, organisation or email address for any gTLD (non-country code) domain they own, a Change of Registrant process will be triggered. This process involves an approval email sent to both the New and Prior Registrant.
The changes will not take effect until the change has been confirmed by both parties, and following the change, the domain will enter a 60 day lock period during which it cannot be transferred or modified again. If either party declines the change, then the change of registrant request is cancelled and the previous whois info remains the same.
What does this mean for end users?
In most cases, but not all, following making a request to change the WHOIS information for their domain, the new registrant will receive an email. This email will ask them:
- to approve or decline the Change of Registrant
- to confirm that their information is correct
Upon approval by the New Registrant, a similar email will be sent to the Prior Registrant asking them to also approve the Change of Registrant.
Only once both approvals have been received is the change of registrant completed.
Since this is an ICANN policy, every domain registrar must be doing the same thing, right?
Unfortunately not that simple. Every domain registrar provider is handling this process under local requirements. Contact your domain registrar for more details. We have our policy updated check it on supp24.com customer portal or contact us directly via support system.