The Enhanced Business Name Registration System

As part of our new government's effort to facilitate faster and easier registration of single-owned businesses in the country, the Department of Trade and Industry has recently amended the revised implementing rules and regulations of the Business Name Law and came out with a department administrative order (DAO) that gave birth to the Enhanced Business Name Registration System (E-BNRS). The agency issued DAO 10-08 Series of 2010 last September 30, 2010 and had the E-BNRS online registration facility upped last October 6, 2010. The system will handle the registration of the business name (BN) of a person who is at least eighteen (18) years old, doing business or proposing to do business in the Philippines under a BN and who is not disqualified by any existing law or regulation to engage in business.

The Enhanced Business Name Registration System is already operational and has the following salient features:

• Reduced required information in the application form – only seven required fields plus the undertaking
• Single Registration per BN, regardless of the number of branches of your business
• No need to upload or submit Email Notification of Approval (ENA) or Transaction Reference Number (TRN) page
• Relaxed rules on the prohibition of identical and confusingly similar BNs
• Territorial coverage of business name (whether within a barangay, city/municipality, region or national in scope) specified
• Three modes of registering a BN retained
• Registration at any DTI Field Office
• No need to personally file your application

Under E-BNRS, there are three (3) modes that a business owner can choose from in registering his business name: namely,

• Purely over the counter - Registration can be done at any DTI Field Office.  In the National Capital Region, DTI-NCR has four Area offices and three satellite offices
• Online end-to-end – File application online at https://www.bnrs.dti.gov.ph/web/guest/home, pay the required fees through G-Cash, and print certificate at your place.  However, the owner must go personally to DTI within 10 working days to present one photo-bearing national issued Identification Document (ID) and the duly-accomplished application form with signature.
• Hybrid – Combination of over the counter and online application

1) File application online, pay and get certificate at DTI Office or at selected SM and Mail and More outlets or

2) File and pay online and get certificate at any DTI Office or at selected SM and Mail and More outlets.

NOTES: a) The owner of the business must go personally to DTI within 10 working days to present one photo-bearing national issued Identification Document (ID) and the duly-accomplished application form with signature of the owner.

b) Applicants may also opt to lodge their application or avail of the end-to-end application process at selected SM Business Service Centers and Mail and More outlets.

c) The local government units also have PBR kiosks where clients may lodge their applications online.

For further details about the E-BNRS, you may consult its FAQs at http://dtincr.ph/faq_bnrs.php