The
Consumer Protection (Electronic Trade Transaction) Regulations 2024 (the “
2024 Regulations”) came into force on 25 December 2024, revoking the Consumer Protection (Electronic Trade Transaction) Regulations 2012 (the “
2012 Regulations”).
The objective of the 2012 Regulations and 2024 Regulations is to provide for the protection of consumers who purchase goods or services electronically by mandating the disclosure of certain information and imposing specific duties and obligations on e-commerce platforms and sellers.
The following summarises some of the salient changes and requirements:
Although, by the red letter of the law, these 2024 Regulations have been in force for nearly six months now, news outlets report that the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Cost of Living are holding off enforcement, at least on the national language requirement, for the time being
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Comments
Media coverage indicates significant interest in the new national language disclosure requirement. We note at least one major e-commerce platform in Malaysia has announced preparations to roll out an automatic translation tool to assist compliance with the new language requirement.
For our part, a major – and welcome – introduction is the requirement to disclose that the goods or services being offered have been certified to the applicable standard of safety and health where one has been set by the competent authority. Over the years, we worked with several associations and companies dealing in regulated items (such as pesticides, poisons, etc.) who have felt the impact of a seeming proliferation of unregulated/illegal counterparts being offered on e-commerce platforms and having to play whack-a-mole in reporting such listings for takedowns.
It remains to be seen whether full enforcement of the 2024 Regulations will be announced only after the wider review of e-commerce laws in Malaysia is completed
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Alert by Melissa Long (Partner) and Cheam Tat Sean (Senior Associate) of the Product Law Practice Group of Skrine.