Transferring an already registered domain name entails switching the registrar company that handles the registration service, so after the transfer itself, you’ll have to manage things like renewal payments or DNS resource record modifications through the new company. The transfer procedure is standard with most Top-Level Domain extensions. Certain country-code extensions are more specific and entail different steps, but in the general case transferring a domain entails a few necessary steps and one of them is unlocking the domain. The lock is a security feature, which is being adopted by more and more domain name registry organizations. It’s a default feature supported by all gTLDs. If a domain is locked, it won’t be possible to start a transfer procedure, so no one can even attempt to steal your domain. The domain lock can be removed only through the account where the domain name is registered and all new domain names that support this functionality are locked by default when they are registered.