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Company Documents

Share Certificate

A formal, branded share certificate for your company — generated as a PDF with the shareholder's name, share count, and certificate number.

R249

once-off

  • Elegant branded certificate design
  • Shareholder name and share count
  • Company details and certificate number
  • Instant digital PDF delivery

Tell us what you need

A document, not a filing

This is the one service in the catalogue that does not go to a government body. A share certificate is the company's own document, issued to a shareholder as evidence of the shares they hold. We generate it as a branded PDF carrying the company details, the shareholder's name, the number of shares, and a certificate number.

Because nothing is filed, there is no processing queue to wait on.

When you need one

  • A shareholder asks for evidence of their shareholding, which is a fair thing to ask for
  • A bank, investor, or buyer is doing due diligence on ownership
  • Shares have just been transferred and the new holder has nothing in hand
  • The company was registered without certificates ever being issued, which is extremely common

What it does not do

Issuing a certificate does not transfer shares and does not update anything at CIPC. If ownership is genuinely changing, the filing is shareholder changes and the certificate follows it. A certificate issued for a transfer that was never agreed or recorded is a document that contradicts the company's own records, which is worse than having none.

It is not a beneficial ownership filing either. That is a separate CIPC submission — see beneficial ownership.

What we need

The company name and registration number as they appear on the CIPC record, the shareholder's full name, and the number of shares. The issue date is optional: leave it blank and the certificate carries the date it is generated.

Get the share count right. A certificate saying 100 shares where the company issued 1,000 is the sort of error that surfaces years later in a due diligence pack, long after everybody has forgotten who typed it.

One certificate per shareholder

Each holder gets their own, showing that holder's own share count. A company with three shareholders needs three certificates, not one listing everybody.

Certificates are numbered. If one is reissued after a transfer, keep the superseded copy with the company records rather than throwing it away — the paper trail is the point of the exercise.

Keep it with the rest of the pack

Banks, landlords, investors, and buyers ask for the same bundle over and over, usually at short notice: the CoR14.3, the company income tax number, and the share certificates. Keeping those three together saves the scramble every time.

If the company is not registered yet

Do not buy this on its own. The Premium registration package issues share certificates at incorporation along with the beneficial ownership filing — see packages — which is the tidier way to start.