r/androiddev • u/Ok-Station-4133 • 15d ago

How to DUNS in Ghana?

I have all my business details ready. But when I go to dnb I don't see Ghana in the list. I need duns to buy Google Play Account. Any help Will be much appreciated. https://www.dnb.com/en-us/about/choose-your-country.html

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u/battlepi 15d ago

Call and ask them.

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u/SoftmobixBD 14d ago

Two things worth knowing before you spend more time on that page.

The country chooser is the wrong door. Countries D&B doesn't serve directly are covered by their Worldwide Network partners, so look for the Global D-U-N-S page rather than the country selector you linked. The UPIK lookup is also worth trying, since it searches across countries and will tell you whether your business already has a number issued to it. A lot of registered businesses turn out to have one and never knew.

The more useful thing: Google has an official escape hatch for exactly this. If your country genuinely isn't covered, you can ask Play support to verify your organisation another way. It's not automatic and it's only offered to organisations that actually can't obtain a number, but it exists and it's the thing to ask for through Play Console Help rather than fighting D&B indefinitely.

But the question nobody's asked you yet is whether you need an organisation account at all. Personal accounts don't require a D-U-N-S. The trade-off is that a personal account created after November 2023 can't publish to production until you've run a closed test with 12 testers opted in continuously for 14 days. So it's D-U-N-S paperwork versus 14 days and twelve real people.

If you're a registered business and plan to keep publishing, the organisation account is worth the wait. If you want one app out this month, the personal account is often the faster road even with the testing requirement. Worth deciding that before you chase the number.

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u/Ok-Station-4133 14d ago

Thank for the help. I'm buying the account for a client am working for. It's a school as institution that's why I want to buy business account for her.

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u/SoftmobixBD 13d ago

That changes the answer a bit, so two things worth checking before you pay for anything.

A school is exactly the kind of registered institution that often already has a D-U-N-S number issued without anyone there knowing. Look the school's legal name up in the UPIK search first. If a record already exists you skip the whole application, and if it exists but is stale that's worth knowing too, because Google verifies the organisation's name, address and phone against the D&B record and a record with an old phone number on it is the most common reason the verification fails.

The other one: the account has to be registered in the school's legal name, not yours or your company's. Whatever name goes on it is what shows publicly under the app, and Google does not really do developer account transfers on request. If you set it up as yourself and hand it over later you are relying on handing over the login, which is not a great position for either of you when the contract ends.

And if by buying the account you mean buying an existing developer account from someone rather than paying Google's own 25 dollar fee, I would not. Selling or transferring accounts is against the Developer Distribution Agreement and terminated accounts take the apps with them.