### New Verification Mechanism Targets High-Risk BrandsStarting January 29, 2026, the platform introduces a dual-path system for sellers of brands prone to counterfeiting to earn the "original" badge on product listings. Sellers must either submit documentation proving ownership or licensing via Rospatent or the Madrid System, or deposit a security payment equivalent to 3% of the brand category's turnover from the previous year, capped between 100,000 and 1.25 million rubles. This applies universally to sellers from all countries, while low-risk brands retain the existing daily 500-ruble fee for the badge.Upon receiving a complaint, sellers have 14 days to verify authenticity. Failure triggers partial or full deduction from the deposit: full retention for state agency claims, 25% for brand representative complaints or patterns indicating counterfeiting. The badge persists on unaffected listings post-partial deduction but vanishes if the deposit depletes entirely. These rules embed directly into seller agreements, signaling a shift from reactive moderation to proactive financial safeguards.### Counterfeiting's Scale Drives Platform ResponseCounterfeit goods plague Russian e-commerce, with shares reaching up to 30% in select categories on major platforms, per entrepreneur insights on detection methods. Platforms already deploy pre-moderation, digital arbitration, and swift complaint responses, yet risks persist, as seen in cases of smartphone substitutions at pick-up points and disguised pharmaceuticals on listings. Dominant players, holding roughly 80% market share, face antitrust scrutiny alongside self-regulation pressures to curb such issues, including inflated logistics and fines. This context frames the security deposit as an escalation in brand compliance, phasing out gray-market tolerances where unauthorized sales once thrived.### Impacts on Product Feeds and Catalog StandardsThe mechanism disrupts high-risk product feeds by conditioning badge eligibility on verifiable proof or deposits, potentially filtering out non-compliant entries preemptively. Non-verified listings risk suppression or removal, mirroring recent platform updates that hide duplicate or unpopular cards. This enforces stricter cataloging standards, compelling sellers to standardize documentation—Rospatent filings or Madrid registrations—before feed uploads, reducing feed bloat from suspect variants.Catalog integrity rises as badges now hinge on financial skin-in-the-game, deterring mass counterfeit uploads. Sellers managing high-risk brands face recalibrated feeds: compliant items retain visibility, while disputed ones trigger automated holds during 14-day reviews, streamlining moderation queues.### Elevating Card Quality and CompletenessProduct cards for high-risk brands demand fuller authenticity proofs, elevating overall quality. Beyond badges, platforms increasingly hide low-engagement listings, tying visibility to engagement metrics alongside compliance. This pushes sellers toward comprehensive cards—precise images, specs, and licensing—to avoid suppression, indirectly boosting completeness as incomplete or fake-prone cards get sidelined.In practice, complaint-driven deductions incentivize preemptive audits, fostering cards resistant to flags like mismatched logos or packaging errors. For cross-border sellers, whose contracts now explicitly bar duplicates and certain fakes, this layers financial risk atop deactivation threats, yielding denser, trustworthy catalogs.### Accelerating Assortment Turnover While Constraining SpeedAssortment rollout speeds up for verified low-risk brands under flat fees, but high-risk ones slow initially due to deposit hurdles—sellers must front capital tied to prior-year turnover before listing. Post-compliance, though, clean badges enable faster scaling, as retained deposits signal platform confidence, quickening inventory cycles.Conversely, complaint spikes could bottleneck output: 14-day holds pause suspect SKUs, compressing assortment diversity temporarily. Platforms mitigate via partial badge retention, preserving feed momentum, yet chronic violators exhaust deposits, halting new high-risk intros outright.### No-Code and AI Integration OpportunitiesNo-code tools gain traction for deposit workflows—sellers automate Rospatent/Madrid uploads via drag-and-drop integrators, slashing manual prep for badges. Security calculations, pegged to 3% turnover, invite no-code calculators syncing seller dashboards to platform APIs, simplifying compliance bids.AI amplifies this: pattern detection flags counterfeiting risks pre-upload, akin to existing pre-moderation, while complaint triage uses machine learning to score deduction severity (e.g., 25% for indicators). For feeds, AI-driven deduplication hides fakes faster, pairing with deposit logic to auto-apply holds. This convergence hardens content infrastructure, where AI verifies docs against registries in real-time, minimizing human review lags and embedding anti-fake heuristics into catalog pipelines. *RETAILER.ru*; *Ecer Freight*.---The shift toward stricter verification and financial accountability clearly signals the growing pressure on e-commerce platforms to combat counterfeiting. This ultimately benefits the entire ecosystem by driving demand for higher quality product data. We anticipate that the increased need for comprehensive product information, accurate cataloging, and automated feed management will further emphasize the importance of robust PIM solutions, providing opportunities for businesses to streamline processes and maintain content integrity. Specifically, sellers should pay attention to how to create a description for a product on a website. Also, understanding the role of a product feed is always a primary concern. The principles of the /blog/product_feed/ in particular, give a good base for beginners and those looking for an optimization. Product cards are also important, and the /blog/how-to_upload_product_cards/ will help in creating listings. Additionally, in order to make your operations more efficient, consider the importance of /tools/deltafeed/ .