In the context of rapidly developing technology and increasingly popular online shopping habits, e-commerce trading floors have become an important part of the modern economy. Vietnam, a country with a young population and high internet penetration rate,  is witnessing a boom in e-commerce activities. However, to ensure the sustainable and transparent development of this market, compliance with legal regulations is extremely necessary.

This article will provide you with important legal information related to the operation and management of e-commerce floors in Vietnam. It also helps enterprises understand and comply with legal regulations, build trust with customers and partners.

1. What kind of website is defined as an e-commerce trading floor?

An e-commerce trading floor is an e-commerce website that allows traders, organizations, and individuals other than the website owner to conduct part or all the process of buying and selling goods and services on it. Currently, the law recognizes these forms of operation for e-commerce trading floors:

• Website allows participants to open booths to display and introduce goods or services;
• Website allows participants to open accounts to carry out the process of entering into contracts with customers;
• The website has a buying and selling section, which allows participants to post information about buying and selling goods and services;
• Social networks have one of the regulated forms of activity listed above and participants directly or indirectly pay fees for carrying out those activities.

Establishing and operating an e-commerce trading floor will have differences between the forms of operation as well as differences between the website owners. Accordingly, the legal procedures for registering an E-commerce trading floor are simpler for Vietnamese enterprises compared to foreign-invested enterprises. This is due to specific commercial law provisions related to Business licenses for foreign-invested enterprises in the “e-commerce services” sector.

2. Responsibilities of the parties when operating on the e-commerce trading floor

The law on e-commerce has define regulations on responsibilities that each party participating in the operation or transaction on the e-commerce platform must comply with. This is aimed at ensuring order, interests & rights of the parties and consumers. However, with the rapid development of e-commerce trade, many arising problems have not been promptly stipulated by the law. This also causes confusion and concern for foreign businesses when operating e-commerce trading services.

Responsibilities of businesses providing e-commerce trading floor services, current law requires enterprises to fully fulfill the following obligations:

• Register to set up a website to provide e-commerce trading floor services according to regulations and publish registered information on the website home page.
• Develop and publicly announce on the website the operating regulations of the e-commerce trading floor, monitor, and ensure the implementation of those regulations on the e-commerce trading floor.
• Require traders, organizations and individuals who are sellers on the e-commerce trading floor to provide information according to regulations when registering to use the service.
• There is an inspection and supervision mechanism to ensure that the information provided by sellers on the e-commerce trading floor is carried out accurately and completely.
• Store registration information of traders, organizations and individuals participating in e-commerce trading floors and regularly update relevant information changes and additions.
• Establish a mechanism to allow traders, organizations and individuals participating in e-commerce exchanges to carry out the contract signing process if the website has an online ordering function.
• Apply necessary measures to ensure information security related to business secrets of traders, organizations, individuals, and personal information of consumers.
• Take timely remedial measures when detecting or receiving feedback about illegal business behavior on the e-commerce trading floor: (i) Prevent and remove from the website purchase and sale information goods, providing services on the list of goods and services banned from business, in industries and occupations banned from business investment according to the provisions of law; (ii) Remove information about goods and services that violate the law within 24 hours of receiving a request from a competent state management agency; (iii) Coordinate with intellectual property rights holders to review and remove products that infringe intellectual property rights according to the processes and procedures announced in the Regulations on operating of the e-commerce trading floor ; (iv) Warn or refuse to provide services for a limited time or permanently to individuals, traders, and organizations whose business conduct violates the law; (v) Other measures according to the Regulations on operations of e-commerce trading floor.
• Support state management agencies to investigate and handle business acts that violate the law and resolve disputes and complaints, including: (i) Providing information about subjects with signs and actions violating of the law on the e-commerce trading floor to the competent state management agency upon discovering or receiving the above information; (ii) Regularly update keywords according to recommendations from competent state management agencies and filter information by keywords before information about goods and services is displayed on the website; (iii) Receive and respond to information to resolve complaints, feedback and disputes related to e-commerce trading floors at the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s E-commerce Activities Management Portal at address online.gov.vn.
• Publicly announce the mechanism to resolve disputes arising during transactions on the e-commerce trading floor. When customers on the e-commerce trading floor have a conflict with the seller or their legitimate interests are damaged, they must provide the customer with information about the seller and actively support the customer to protect their rights and interests. their legitimate interests.
• For e-commerce trading floors with online ordering functions, in addition to the above obligations, traders and organizations providing e-commerce trading floor services are responsible for:

(i) Appoint a focal point to receive requests and provide online information to state management agencies about subjects showing signs of violating the law; This focal point will provide information within 24 hours from the time of receiving the request to promptly serve the work of inspection, examination, handling of violations and resolving complaints and denunciations; (ii) Representing foreign sellers on e-commerce trading floors to resolve consumer complaints related to goods and services provided by foreign traders and is responsible for notifying obligations Taxes of foreign sellers when participating in e-commerce trading floors in accordance with Vietnamese law; (iii) Act as the focal point for receiving and resolving consumer complaints in case a transaction is performed on an e-commerce trading floor with more than 02 parties involved; (iv) Store information about order transactions made on the e-commerce trading floor according to the provisions of accounting law; (v) Jointly compensate for damages in case of violation of the obligations stipulated herein that causes damage.”

Responsibilities of sellers on e-commerce trading floors:

• Provide complete and accurate prescribed information to traders and organizations providing e-commerce trading floor services when registering to use the service.
• Provide complete information about goods and services when selling goods or providing services on the e-commerce trading floor.
• Ensure the accuracy and truthfulness of information about goods and services provided on the e-commerce trading floor.
• Provide information about your business situation when requested by a competent state agency to serve e-commerce statistical activities.
• Comply with legal regulations on payment, advertising, promotion, intellectual property rights protection, consumer rights protection and other relevant legal regulations when selling goods or providing services on the e-commerce trading floor.
• Fulfill all tax obligations according to the provisions of law.

3. The Regulations on operating of the e-commerce trading floor

The e-commerce trading floor operates according to its own regulations and these ones must be shown on the home page of the website. When developing regulations, enterprises need to ensure that operating regulations will have mandatory content prescribed by law. This will be the basis for competent authorities to approve the establishment of enterprise’s e-commerce trading floor. In addition, enterprises also need to pay attention to the operating regulations and the responsibilities of the e-commerce platform service provider, because when the enterprise posts the content of the regulations on the website, the enterprise will have to comply with the recorded contents.

Mandatory content of the Regulations on operating of e-commerce trading floor will include the following items:

• Rights and obligations of traders and organizations providing e-commerce trading floor services;
• Rights and obligations of users of e-commerce trading floor services; If the e-commerce trading floor combines many different forms of operation, describe the transaction process for each form of organization and operation, including the goods delivery process (if any);
• Review activities and handling authority of traders and organizations providing e-commerce trading floor services when detecting business acts that violate the law on the trading floor;
• Rights and obligations of the parties in transactions carried out on the e-commerce trading floor. In case a transaction has more than 02 parties participating, the responsibilities must be clearly defined between the parties selling the goods and providing services;
• Limit the liability of traders and organizations providing e-commerce trading floor services in transactions performed on the floor;
• Information security regulations, inspection and supervision mechanisms to ensure the provision of information and information management on e-commerce trading floors;
• Mechanism to resolve complaints and disputes between parties related to transactions conducted on the e-commerce trading floor;
• Policy to protect personal information of users of e-commerce trading floor services as prescribed in Article 69 of this Decree;
• Measures to deal with violations of consumer rights on e-commerce trading floors;
• Measures to handle violations for those who do not comply with the operating regulations of the e-commerce trading floor.
• Assign responsibility for providing goods documents between the seller, the e-commerce trading floor service provider and the logistics service provider in case there is an agreement to use third-party logistics services;
• Process of coordinating with intellectual property rights holders to review and remove products infringing intellectual property rights on e-commerce trading floors;
• Policies generally applicable to transactions on the floor related to goods inspection, return policy, refund policy (including refund cases, procedures and methods of refunding customers) in case the e-commerce trading floor has online ordering function.

Please note that, currently, activities on the e-commerce trading floor are quite vibrant and with the trend of all activities being online, that is why the competent authority looks quite carefully at the content of the regulations to ensure the rights of the parties when doing business on the e-commerce floor as well as the rights of consumers. Therefore, when developing regulations, enterprises need to pay attention to the compatibility of the regulations with the operating model of the exchange and the requirements of the competent authority to ensure the content of the regulations is complete.

Time of writing: 17/05/2024

The article contains general information which is of reference value, in case you want to receive legal opinions on issues you need clarification on, please get in touch with our Lawyer  at  info@cdlaf.vn

You can refer for more information:

• The necessity of copyright registration for computer software
• General Legal Framework on Software Copyright in Vietnam
• Overview of Notifications and Registration of E-commerce Websites in Vietnam
• Conditions and procedures for granting business licenses for Cyber information security products and services