You Paid ACRA for a Document. Here Is How You Actually Get It

Paying for an ACRA information product does not deliver the file. It delivers a download code to the email address you gave at checkout, and you then redeem that code on Bizfile’s product download page. The code normally arrives within 15 minutes, and you have 30 days to use it.

Raffles Corporate Services works with a panel of experienced Singapore law firms who offer cost-effective and efficient legal service and advice. This article is general information only and is not legal advice.

That two-step design catches people out constantly. Someone buys a Business Profile at 4pm because a bank wants it by 5pm, watches the payment go through, and then sits staring at an inbox wondering where the document went. Nothing is broken. The document is waiting behind a code that is sitting in a mailbox nobody is watching.

This piece covers how retrieval actually works, the three ways it goes wrong, and what you can and cannot recover once the window closes.

Why there is a code at all

Until October 2023, a purchase produced a direct download link in an email. That is a comfortable arrangement for a buyer and an even more comfortable one for a scammer, because a plausible email carrying a clickable link to “your ACRA document” is exactly the shape of a phishing attempt that corporate staff have been trained to click on.

ACRA replaced the link with a code. You now have to open Bizfile yourself, type the code in, and confirm the delivery email address. Nothing you click in the email itself downloads anything. If you receive an email purporting to come from ACRA with a direct download attachment or link, that alone is a reason to treat it with suspicion.

The trade-off is friction, and the friction is where the failures happen.

The retrieval process, in order

1. Complete payment on Bizfile. Before you confirm, read the delivery email address on the payment screen. This is the single field that determines whether you ever see the product.
2. Wait up to 15 minutes. A payment confirmation and a delivery notification carrying the product download code are sent to that address.
3. If you bought while logged in with Singpass or Corppass, open your Bizfile inbox as well. The same code is stored there, which gives you a second route if the email is delayed or filtered.
4. Open Bizfile’s product download page and enter the download code together with the delivery email address you used at purchase. The two must match.
5. Download the file, then save it somewhere durable. An email inbox is not a document management system.

That is the whole process, and for most purchases it takes less time to complete than it took to read.

Free copies work the same way, and expire the same way

Not everything you retrieve from Bizfile is paid for. Company officers and members get free access to most of their own company’s registers. A newly registered business gets a free Business Profile, and so does a business that has just renewed its registration or filed its annual return or declaration.

The important point is that the 30-day download window applies to free copies too. A free entitlement is not a standing right to the document forever. It is a window, and once it closes ACRA does not reopen it.

What goes wrong in practice

The delivery email address is wrong or unwatched

This is the most common failure by a wide margin. Someone buys a profile using a personal Singpass login and the delivery address defaults to a personal email, or a staff member types the address by hand and transposes two characters, or the address is a shared mailbox that three people can see and none of them own.

The code goes where you sent it. ACRA cannot redirect a code that has already been issued to a different address, and the download page will not accept a code paired with a different email. If the address was mistyped, the practical position is that you have paid for a document you cannot open.

Fix it at the front end. Before payment, use a monitored mailbox that belongs to the company, not to whoever happened to be at the keyboard.

You bought without logging in

You do not have to log in to buy most ACRA information products. If you do not log in, there is no Bizfile inbox holding a spare copy of the code. The email is the only copy in existence.

If your organisation buys ACRA products regularly, log in with Corppass every time. The inbox copy costs you nothing and saves the occasional purchase.

Thirty days pass

The window is fixed and there are no extensions. This bites hardest in transactions where documents are gathered early and used late: a financing round where the profiles were pulled in the first week of diligence and the completion slips by six weeks, or a court filing where the exhibits were assembled before the affidavit was settled.

The remedy is to buy the product again. That is annoying at Business Profile prices and genuinely irritating at Corporate Compliance and Financial Profile prices. ACRA’s own published pricing on its risk assessment guidance puts a Business Profile at $5.50, a People Profile at $33 and a Corporate Compliance and Financial Profile at $50, so a full re-run of a diligence set is not a trivial cost.

Download on the day you buy. Always. The file is the asset, not the receipt.

There is no paper version to fall back on

Since June 2018 every ACRA business information product has been delivered electronically. Hard copies were withdrawn, including for microfilm of entity records filed before 13 January 2003, non-electronic extracts of older records such as memorandum and articles of association, annual returns and audited financial statements filed before that date, and certificates.

This matters when an older record is involved. If you need a document from the pre-2003 filing era, it will come to you as a digital product through the same code-and-email route as everything else. There is no counter to walk up to, and no envelope in the post.

It also means your internal filing discipline is the only backup that exists. Save the downloaded PDF into the company’s records at the moment you get it, named so that someone who was not involved can find it in a year.

Where this sits in a corporate secretarial routine

Most companies buy ACRA products reactively: a bank asks, a landlord asks, a counterparty asks. A better habit is to treat the retrieval step as part of the filing itself.

After any filing that changes the public record, pull the resulting document and store it. After an annual return, take the free Business Profile you are entitled to rather than letting the entitlement lapse. Before a financing or an acquisition, pull the set you need and check the dates on what you already hold rather than assuming last year’s profile still describes the company.

If you are new to the platform, our guide to what Bizfile actually is and what you can and cannot do in it sets the boundaries, and your first fifteen minutes in Bizfile covers the orientation. If your purchases are made by staff rather than by you, read who should have Bizfile access before handing out roles, and make sure the person buying is logged in as a business user through Corppass rather than under their own name.

Frequently asked questions

How long does the ACRA download code take to arrive?
Normally within 15 minutes of successful payment. It is sent to the delivery email address you entered at checkout, alongside a separate payment confirmation. If you bought while logged in with Singpass or Corppass, the same code is also placed in your Bizfile inbox, which is the faster place to look.

I cannot find the email. Can ACRA resend the code to a different address?
No. The code is tied to the delivery email address used at purchase, and the download page requires both to match. If you were logged in when you bought, retrieve the code from your Bizfile inbox instead. If you were not logged in and the address was wrong, the practical remedy is to buy the product again.

What happens after 30 days?
The download window closes and no extension is available. This applies to free entitlements as well as purchased products. Once the window has passed you must buy the product afresh, at the published fee, and the new purchase generates a new code with a new 30-day window.

Can I still get a hard copy of an old record?
No. All ACRA business information products have been delivered digitally since June 2018, including older records such as pre-2003 microfilm entries, non-electronic extracts and certificates. You will receive a digital file through the same download code process, and you should save it to your own records immediately.

Is the emailed link in an ACRA notification safe to click?
ACRA moved away from direct download links precisely because they are easy to imitate. A genuine delivery notification gives you a code to enter on Bizfile yourself. Treat any email that offers to download an ACRA document directly, or that asks for payment details, as suspect and go to Bizfile independently.

Never buying the same document twice

The whole problem here is administrative rather than legal. Documents get bought by whoever happens to be dealing with the request, delivered to whichever mailbox that person uses, and then lost between the purchase and the deadline that prompted it.

Raffles Corporate Services buys, retrieves and files ACRA information products for clients as a matter of routine, so the document is in the company’s records on the day it is issued rather than in somebody’s inbox. If you are assembling a set of ACRA documents for a bank, a buyer or a court, it is worth a short conversation before you start paying for them.

You can reach us through Raffles Corporate Services, or read more on Singapore corporate secretarial practice at Singapore Secretary Services.

— The Editorial Team, Raffles Corporate Services