Russian regulators are taking a significant step toward standardizing e-commerce operations by developing new rules for verifying sellers and product listings on digital marketplaces. According to the Ministry of Economic Development, the draft regulation will serve as a key bylaw to the recently adopted platform economy law, setting practical requirements for both domestic and international sellers.
The rules, still under development, mandate that legal entities provide core business data—such as company name, tax identification number, legal address, and contact details—when registering on a platform. Digital marketplaces, in turn, will be required to cross-check this information against official state registries. Similar procedures are being considered for foreign sellers operating in Russia.
As for products, verification criteria will align with legal and regulatory requirements, including proof of government registration, product certification, or mandatory labeling depending on the product category. Special attention will be given to critical categories such as dietary supplements, pesticides, agrochemicals, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals, reflecting broader industry and regulatory concerns over counterfeit and non-compliant goods.
Further consultations are ongoing to define precisely which data sellers must provide and what functional capabilities platforms must ensure for compliance. At present, each marketplace sets its own requirements, leading to frequent suspensions of product cards and penalties for sellers due to fragmented compliance regimes.
Background and Regulatory Context
The regulatory initiative is part of Russia’s broader platform economy law, which is set to take full effect in October 2026. This new legislation establishes the basic framework for interactions between digital marketplaces, sellers (including self-employed individuals), and platform users.
Beyond verification rules, the law will create an official government registry, limited to large platforms—those with more than 100,000 unique daily users and at least 10,000 active partners, or with annual transaction volumes exceeding 50 billion rubles.
In recent years, Russia has been adapting its e-commerce landscape through gradual reforms. While the foundational platform economy law, passed by parliament in July 2024, introduced the concept of “digital intermediaries” and mandated transparency, some of the stricter proposals—such as direct liability for counterfeit goods or mandatory transparency for all offers—were softened.
As a result, current obligations for marketplaces include:
- implementing partner identification via state registries,
- transmitting seller data to tax authorities.
These measures aim to combat tax evasion, a chronic issue linked to widespread registration of sellers as self-employed to avoid VAT and other obligations, while also strengthening consumer protection.
Regulatory focus on product labeling and certificate verification has increased—especially amid concerns over illicit trade, particularly by foreign sellers, as well as President Putin’s explicit call to curb the spread of counterfeit goods on these platforms. The Ministry of Industry and Trade, together with the antitrust regulator and Roskomnadzor, has begun pressuring platforms to strengthen internal compliance and synchronize processes with state databases, as confirmed by updates from leading marketplaces.
Impact on E-commerce Content Infrastructure
The emerging verification requirements directly impact e-commerce content infrastructure, particularly product feeds and catalog management. Standardized validation of seller and product data at the onboarding stage will increase the initial data burden but should reduce inconsistencies and compliance issues in the future.
Influence on Product Feeds
Centralized and harmonized data collection will affect product feed formation, introducing stricter requirements for field completeness and accuracy.
Marketplaces, by providing a gateway for data verification, will likely set common standards for feed structure and content, particularly regarding:
- mandatory submission of official registration documents,
- certificates,
- labeling codes for goods in regulated categories.
This could simplify cross-platform listing for sellers, reduce duplicate effort, and lower the risk of feed rejections due to incomplete regulatory data—a persistent industry challenge.
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Standards of Cataloguing
Regulated cataloguing processes will undergo significant transformation. The shift toward requiring consistent verification data will push marketplaces to upgrade their cataloguing infrastructure, ensuring that every product card referencing sensitive or controlled goods includes validated attributes defined by official standards.
In the long term, this is likely to drive convergence of data models across platforms for critical product classes, such as healthcare-related goods and chemicals, thereby improving interoperability and transparency within the ecosystem.
Card Quality, Completeness, and Assortment Turnaround
Content quality and completeness will become a competitive differentiator:
- Sellers providing accurate, certified data will face fewer listing suspensions and faster moderation.
- The new regulatory environment will create incentives to invest in automation and advanced content management solutions to minimize manual interventions.
While initial compliance efforts may slow time-to-market for some assortments, streamlined, digital-first processes are expected to accelerate overall onboarding once common practices are established.
👉 For businesses looking to optimize product content, a good first step is to start with proper product descriptions.
Adoption of No-code Solutions and AI
The demand for scalable, cost-effective compliance is likely to accelerate the adoption of no-code platforms and artificial intelligence.
- No-code tools can help sellers—including SMEs and non-technical personnel—generate compliant product card data by guiding input, validating document uploads, and ensuring mandatory attributes are completed.
- For marketplaces, AI-driven data extraction and verification—using computer vision for document analysis or natural language processing for certificate validation—can significantly reduce manual moderation workload and minimize human error.
AI also enables rapid cross-checking of seller and product data against authoritative state sources, improving fraud prevention and reducing the share of counterfeit or non-compliant goods passing initial moderation. These technologies will be essential to handle the scale and heterogeneity of Russia’s largest marketplaces, especially as regulatory scrutiny of sensitive product categories intensifies.
Strategic Direction and Sector Outlook
The convergence of regulatory action and content infrastructure modernization marks a strategic inflection point for Russian e-commerce.
- Marketplaces face the challenge of balancing compliance, user experience, operational scalability, and cross-border participation.
- Sellers face compliance challenges but also opportunities to differentiate through transparency and operational discipline.
Uncertainty remains around the final strictness of the rules, the precise technological requirements, and enforcement burdens. However, the trajectory is clear:
- seamless data exchange with state systems,
- a single view of seller and product legitimacy,
- automated, real-time compliance checks becoming the norm.
Sellers who invest early in end-to-end content automation and robust certification management will benefit from reduced friction, fewer suspended listings, and faster time-to-market.
👉 Consider starting with a reliable price list processing program to ensure your data is accurate.
The anticipated reforms, though not yet fully codified, signal the beginning of a new regulatory paradigm—one that will require alignment, agility, and continuous innovation from all participants in the e-commerce ecosystem. Early adaptation and investment in digital content management and AI-enabled verification will be essential as the regulatory environment matures and enforcement intensifies.
👉 For more on the impact of AI, see our article on Artificial Intelligence for Business.
Conclusion
The Russian e-commerce market is undoubtedly entering a phase of stricter regulation.
This shift underscores the growing importance of:
- product data quality,
- compliance,
- robust content management infrastructure.
At NotPIM, we understand these challenges and provide solutions to:
- simplify product data management,
- streamline feed transformation, enrichment, and validation,
- help businesses remain compliant while scaling in the evolving Russian market.