TikTok’s taking the next steps in its growing eCommerce push with a new business registration option that will enable brands to list their business category on their profile, while also giving them early access to new business features.

As you can see in this screenshot, shared by social media expert Matt Navarra (via Yasser Masood), some TikTok business profile managers are now able to access the new business registration option in their Business Suite settings.

As TikTok explains, this is not the same as a verification badge, in providing an extra level of assurance and authority about your business identity. But by registering your business through this process, which requires the user to enter various additional company details, you can then display your business category on your TikTok profile, which will provide another way for TikTok to both gather data about business users, while also categorizing pages into different segments in the app.

That could help in the next stage of its eCommerce listings, by better highlighting different businesses, and showcasing them to relevant users. It could also help to communicate what your business does, and make it easier to drive purchase action from profile visitors.

eCommerce is the next big step for TikTok. With short-form video providing fewer ad placement opportunities, TikTok needs to provide alternate means of revenue generation for creators, in order to keep them posting their clips, instead of heading to YouTube or Instagram instead, which have more established revenue-share systems.

In-stream shopping has been the key avenue on this front for Douyin, the Chinese version of the app, which now generates the majority of its revenue from direct purchases in-app. TikTok’s looking to follow suit, with the expansion of its eCommerce listings, as well as live-stream shopping, Shopify integration, and various other commerce-related projects now well in the works for the rising video app.

Business registration is a lesser element in this respect, but the option to share your business category adds an extra level of authority to your in-app presence, while also better communicating your offerings to users.  

We’ve asked TikTok for more details on the option, and what the early access element entails, and we’ll update this post if/when we hear back.