How can Name.com sell .CA domains without being CIRA-certified?

Question

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) manages the .CA top-level domain. They maintain a list of registrars who are certified with CIRA to sell .CA domain names.

I have registered a .CA domain with Name.com (which I guess is a subsidiary of Donuts) but I noticed that neither Name.com nor Donuts are on the list of registrars certified with CIRA. How can that be? Is this simply a matter of CIRA not keeping their list up-to-date? Or is it possible for registrars to sell domains without being authorized or certified by the organization that manages the TLD?

Answer 1

As Patrick Mevzek said in his comment, it's because registrars can have resellers.

This is the response I got from CIRA.

Name.com is a reseller for other Registrars, and in this case they are for at least one certified .CA Registrar.

Certification is a process that requires some strenuous testing on the Registrars side. They also have to agree and adhere to a large list of policies that we have in place. Resellers do not have to go through the same systems.

In this case it turns out that my domains are actually registered with Tucows and Gandi Services Inc. and Name is just reselling those.