International eCommerce Legal Considerations

• Applicable taxes
• Customs duties
• Laws around shipping and refunds
• Fraud detection methods
• Privacy policies

You may have a certain degree of choice in regard to what policies you decide to implement as a business, considering privacy and the overall legal impact of your practices. Some areas also have general regulations in place, like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), the CalOPPA (California Online Privacy Protection Act), and PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard). If the site uses specific healthcare data or other sensitive financial information, there could be additional financial or healthcare industry regulations you will need to comply with, like HIPAA. Ultimately, there are a lot of legalities to consider with your international eCommerce presence, including terms and policies, that are absolutely critical to pay attention to from a business perspective.

There's nothing like having a successful operation in place which ends up getting shut down because a competitor happens to notice that your international eCommerce site is not complying with legal regulations in a particular region. The related fines, penalties, interests and fees will be devastating. Not complying with standard terms and legal requirements can pose a significant risk to the health of your business. That being said, following the legal requirements isn't necessarily overcomplicated. Much of the groundwork involves a basis of simply understanding these legal requirements, how they work, and going into detail around how each of the regions or countries specifically interpret and apply law across the different areas.

Working with a Legal Professional to Achieve Optimal Adherence to Requirements

One of the actions that we certainly recommend is collaboration with an adept legal counsel for those different regions of interest to your business. Many legal counsels specialize in eCommerce, so there's no reason why you can't engage a specialized professional within a particular location. You can also use online tools for vetting legal counsels to find an appropriate partner in the areas you don't have a physical presence. Generally speaking, there is a vast number of legal experts who specialize in international eCommerce. They can help with the actual legal drafting of the forms, the resources that users are going to sign off in the terms, the privacy policy, the terms of use, etc. This is because within privacy protection rules, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), very specific terminology exists for what the site is required to display and provide as a reference to the end user.

We definitely recommend that all sorts of communication around the legal requirements and terms are crystal clear for the users. It must be ensured that the end user has no question nor doubt about how things are supposed to work. There's a significantly continual push towards plain language and making sure that the descriptions of terms, the privacy policy, or any other legal jargon, they are all focused on clarification. The overall terms need to be very explicit and plainly stated, so that end users can realistically read and acknowledge the underlying terms as quickly as possible.