How to Register a Sole Proprietorship or Partnership on EzBiz

The thirty days have usually already gone.

Almost everyone who registers an enterprise in Malaysia has been trading first — taking orders, issuing invoices, collecting payment — and only reaches for EzBiz when a customer asks for an SSM certificate or a bank refuses to open an account. Section 5(1) of the Registration of Businesses Act 1956 does not care about that sequence. The person responsible for a business shall, not later than thirty days from the date of the commencement of the business, apply to the Registrar for registration.

The clock starts when the business starts, not when you get organised.

Who this applies to, and who it does not

ROBA 1956 is not national law. Section 1(2) states plainly that the Act applies to Peninsular Malaysia only; it was later extended to the Federal Territory of Labuan with effect from 15 March 1996. SSM’s own guideline repeats it — registrable businesses are those “operating in West Malaysia which includes Peninsular Malaysia and the Federal Territory”.

If your business operates in Sabah or Sarawak, EzBiz is not your route and this page is not your law. Those states run their own ordinances and their own registering authorities.

Section 4 also carves out businesses that fall outside the Act altogether: anything owned exclusively by a registered company, anything run by government or a statutory body, registered societies and co-operatives, and practices that consist solely of a profession which by law only qualified registered persons may exercise. The Schedule adds petty traders, certain fair-day sellers, and smallholders under 25 acres employing no more than five people.

Personal name or trade name — the RM30 question

This is the first screen in EzBiz and the one that sets your fee.

	Personal name	Trade name
What it is	Exactly the name on your MyKad or MyPR	Any invented business name
Example	Ruslan bin Mohamed	Kedai Dobi Mewah
Approval	None needed	Prior approval of the Registrar of Business
Fee	RM30 per year	RM60 per year

The gap is not arbitrary. A personal name needs no vetting because SSM already holds your identity. A trade name has to be examined against SSM’s Business Name Registration Guidelines and against every existing entry on the registers — so it costs double, and it can be rejected.

Those naming rules are stricter than most people expect. A trade name is treated as identical to an existing one if the only difference is & versus “and” or “N”, a full stop or dash, a plural, a root word that carries the same meaning (Trade / Trading / Trader), or the word “New” bolted on the front. Names that are too general get refused, and so do names that mislead about what the business does — SSM’s own example is a Restoran Maju that sells clothes.

Branches are RM5 each per year, and a business information print is RM10.

The EzBiz walkthrough

EzBiz now sits behind the SSM4U portal. The current user guideline (version 6.1, 24 May 2026) has the flow starting at ssm4u.com.my, not at the old standalone EzBiz address.

1. Sign in at ssm4u.com.my, pick ezbiz Online on the main page, click Go To Ezbiz.
2. My Business Services → New Business Registration.
3. Main Information. Choose Name Type (Trade Name or Personal Name), enter the Business Start Date, the Partnership Agreement Date if there is one, and the Registration Period — anywhere from 1 to 5 years. Decide whether to buy the Business Info at RM10. The transaction status shows DATA ENTRY.
4. Has Branch(es)? / Is Online Seller? Answer both. The online-seller flag is a real field, not an afterthought.
5. Main Address and Mailing Address. Enter the postcode first and the town list populates. Copy From Main Address if they are the same.
6. Branches Information, only if you said yes. RM5 per branch per year.
7. Business Information. Write a Business Description, then Add Business Code — search by keyword and select at least one code. This is the choice that later propagates into bank KYC, licensing and grant eligibility, so do not pick the first plausible line.
8. Owner Information. Details auto-populate only if the owner has already completed EzBiz ID verification. For a partnership, enter each partner’s MyKad or MyPR and Add Partner.
9. Fee and Declaration. Tick the declaration, Preview, then Submit Payment.

The certificate is not emailed to you. Go back to Registration Status / History → Approved/Reject and click Download Certificate. SSM’s guideline states the certificate and business info remain downloadable for 90 days from the approval date. Miss that window and you are paying again for a copy.

The partner-verification trap

If you add a partner, their status sits at PENDING VERIFICATION and you cannot preview or pay until they log into their own SSM4U account, open Registration Partner Verification, and confirm. A partner without an activated SSM4U account is a hard stop on your application, not a delay you can work around.

Two fee incentives most guides never mention

SSM’s EzBiz guidelines carry two schemes with attachment requirements built into the application flow:

• Skim Pendaftaran Perniagaan Perihatin (SPPP) — B40 entrepreneurs evidenced by BPN 2.0, BPR, BKM, mySalam or STR receipt, or a spouse’s receipt with a marriage certificate; and full-time students at a Malaysian IPTA, IPTS, polytechnic, college or skills institute, on a letter of certification.
• Skim 1 OKU 1 Perniagaan (S1O1P) — registered OKU cardholders, applied for through User Profile → OKU Registration and approved before the business application. The guideline is explicit that the exemption covers the first year only, and that branch fees and the RM10 business info are still payable.

Confirm eligibility and whether the schemes are still open before you count on them.

What registration does and does not buy you

Section 5(8) says it outright: registration under the Act does not imply that any other legal requirement has been complied with. Your premise licence, signboard licence, food-handler certification or sector permit are separate battles.

What it does buy you is the ability to enforce your own contracts. Section 8(1) is the provision nobody reads: so long as your particulars are not on the register, no right of yours arising out of a contract made in relation to that business is enforceable by suit. You can still be sued; you cannot sue. Relief is available from the High Court under proviso (a), but only on application, on conditions, and at your cost.

Common mistakes

• Treating the 30 days as running from the day you apply. It runs from commencement. Backdating a start date to make the filing look timely is a false statement to the Registrar under s.12(1)(d), on the same RM50,000 scale.
• Assuming ROBA applies nationwide. Register a Kuching or Kota Kinabalu business on EzBiz and you have registered nothing that the relevant state authority recognises.
• Letting the certificate lapse quietly. Trading past the expiry date is its own offence under s.12(1)(b), independent of never having registered.
• Not displaying the certificate. Section 11A requires it exhibited conspicuously at the principal place of business and at each branch. Section 12(2) prices the omission at RM2,000.
• Forgetting the 90-day download window. The certificate is not sent to you.
• Believing an enterprise gives you limited liability. It does not. A sole proprietor and every conventional partner is personally liable without limit.
• Skipping the change notification. Moved premises, added a partner, changed the nature of the business — s.5B(1) gives you 30 days.

What’s next

If you have been trading for more than thirty days, register now rather than waiting for a tidier start date; the exposure grows with every unregistered contract. Then decide the registration period deliberately — five years up front removes four renewal reminders you will otherwise forget.

If limited liability matters to you, or if you expect to take on partners with real capital at risk, register the enterprise now for immediate legitimacy and treat the comparison against an LLP or a Sdn Bhd as the next decision, not this one.