Transferring an existing domain entails switching the registrar company that provides the domain name registration service, so after the transfer, you will have to manage things like renewal payments or DNS updates through the new company. The transfer process is standard with most generic and country-code domain extensions. Some country-code extensions are more specific and entail different procedures, but in the general case transferring a domain entails a few necessary procedures and one of them is unlocking the domain. The lock is a security feature, which is being embraced by more and more domain name registry operators. It is a standard feature supported by all gTLDs. If a domain is locked, it will not be possible to start a transfer process, so no one can even attempt to snatch your domain name. The lock can be removed only through the account where the domain is registered and all new domain names that support this feature are locked by default when they are registered.