Almost nothing about a Norwegian branch registration is hard. The forms have a known shape, the fee is published, the filing is done online. Then you reach the box that asks for the contact person’s Norwegian identity number, nobody in your company has one, and the whole thing stops for a month.
What a d-number is
Norway identifies everyone in its registers by an eleven-digit number. If you live here, that number is a fødselsnummer, a national identity number. If you do not live here but you need to appear in a Norwegian register anyway, you get a d-nummer instead. Think of it as a national ID number with a shorter shelf life.
It is issued by the tax administration, Skatteetaten, which runs the National Population Register. Banks, employers, Brønnøysund and the tax office all accept it as your identifier.
D-number and fødselsnummer
They look identical, eleven digits in the same format, and they are used the same way in almost every system. Three differences matter.
A d-number is temporary. It can be marked inactive if it is unused for years, and it is meant to be replaced by a fødselsnummer if you later move to Norway. A fødselsnummer follows a real registered residence. And the first digit of a d-number is raised by four, which is how a Norwegian system tells the two apart at a glance.
For running a NUF, the d-number does everything the national number would. You do not need to upgrade it unless your own situation changes.
Who needs one
For a branch registration, the person who needs a Norwegian number is the contact person for the NUF, the individual Brønnøysund can write to and hold responsible for the registration being correct. Depending on how your parent company is structured, a signing board member or the branch manager may need one too.
Outside company registration, a d-number is also what you are issued if you work in Norway short-term, buy Norwegian property, open a Norwegian bank account as a non-resident, or are a partner in a Norwegian entity. Most foreign founders meet it first through exactly the situation this article is about.
You do not have to move here
This is the point that surprises people and it is good news. The NUF contact person can live anywhere. There is no residence requirement, no minimum number of days in Norway, no Norwegian address needed for the person themselves.
What Norway wants is not a resident. It is an identified human being it can attach the registration to, verified to a standard it trusts. The d-number is how a non-resident becomes that identified person in the system.
How to apply
There is no single public form you fill in yourself for the company-registration case. The d-number is usually requested as part of the branch registration: Brønnøysund and Skatteetaten pass the request between them, and the applicant supplies certified proof of identity, a certified copy of a passport, and sometimes documentation of why the number is needed.
The identity check is the strict part. The passport copy has to be certified by an authority Skatteetaten accepts, which in practice means a notary, a Norwegian foreign service mission, or an approved ID checkpoint. A photocopy you certified yourself will come back.
If the number is needed for tax or work reasons rather than company registration, the route is a form RF-1209 submitted through an employer or through a tax office, and the person may have to attend an ID check in Norway in person. For the NUF case the registration-linked route avoids that.
How long it takes
Plan for two to five weeks from a complete, correctly certified application to the number being issued, and longer if anything has to be sent back. Skatteetaten does not commit to a service standard on this and the real time swings with their workload.
So a NUF registration where the contact person already holds a Norwegian number is a job of days. One where the d-number has to be obtained first is a job of six to eight weeks, and nearly all of that gap is waiting for this.
What goes wrong
- Certification not accepted
- The passport copy was certified by someone Skatteetaten does not recognise, or the certification is missing a stamp, a date or the certifier's title. This is the single most common reason an application bounces.
- Name mismatch
- The name on the passport, the name on the company documents and the name on the application are not character-for-character the same. Middle names and transliterations cause this.
- No stated reason
- The application does not clearly connect the person to a Norwegian need. 'For a company registration' with the company's details attached is enough; nothing is not.
- Sent too early
- Requesting the d-number before the branch registration it belongs to exists, so there is nothing for Skatteetaten to link it to.
None of these are complicated. They are the kind of thing you only get right the second time, unless someone who has done it before sets the paperwork up for you.
What it does and does not do
A d-number lets you be the registered contact person or role-holder for a Norwegian entity, open a Norwegian bank account, be recorded as a taxpayer, and be identified by Norwegian public bodies. For running a NUF from abroad, that is the full list of what you need it to do.
It does not give you a Norwegian electronic ID on its own. BankID, the login nearly every Norwegian online service uses, is issued by a bank after its own identity process, and having a d-number is a precondition, not the whole of it. It does not give you residence rights, healthcare, or anything that depends on actually living in Norway. And it does not, by itself, make your company Norwegian. It makes you identifiable so the company’s branch registration can go through.
We run the d-number as part of the branch filing
The certification, the wording, the chasing and reading the rejection letters. It is where most of the work in a NUF registration goes, and it is the reason the service is worth paying for rather than doing from a form.
Sources
- Skatteetaten, d-number for who is issued one, what identity documentation is required, and how it differs from a national identity number.
- Brønnøysund, Norwegian-registered foreign business (NUF) for the contact person requirement in a branch registration.
- Skatteetaten, identification numbers for foreign companies for the registration-linked route and the RF-1209 route.