Transferring an already registered domain name involves changing the domain registrar that handles the registration service, so after the transfer, you’ll have to manage things like renewal payments or DNS record updates through the new registrar company. The transfer procedure itself is standard with most domain extensions. Certain country-code extensions are more specific and involve different procedures, but in the general case transferring a domain entails several basic steps and one of them is unlocking the domain. The lock is a safety feature, which is being adopted by more and more domain registry organizations. It is a standard feature supported by all generic Top-Level Domains. If a domain name is locked, it won’t be possible to start a transfer procedure, so nobody can even try to take your domain name. The lock can be removed only through the account where the domain name is registered and all new domains that support this option are locked by default when they are registered.