TikTok Shop's Continuous Investment In Safety Fuels Sustainable Growth For Malaysian MSMEs

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 29 (Bernama) -- Malaysia’s digital economy continues to gain momentum, with an expanding community of over 1.8 million local sellers and 3.8 million affiliate creators leveraging TikTok Shop as the trusted full-funnel e-commerce ecosystem to create sustainable livelihoods.

With TikTok Shop recording more than 100 million daily product searches in Malaysia, it is uniquely positioned to accelerate the digital transformation of these homegrown entrepreneurs, as proven by its recent milestone of over 130 per cent year-on-year sales uplift for Malaysian-made products under the #JomLokal initiative.

At the heart of this progress is TikTok Shop’s continuous efforts to build and maintain a safe e-commerce ecosystem that facilitates secure shopping experiences for a nationwide community, from discovery to purchase.

“Safety is the top priority for TikTok Shop. This commitment is underpinned by our continuous investment, robust end-to-end policies, and compliance with local laws,” Nur Azre Abdul Aziz, Director of Strategic Partnerships, TikTok Shop Malaysia, said in a statement.

“As of Dec 2024, we have invested nearly USD1 billion globally in tools, technologies, and people to protect our community of shoppers, sellers, and affiliate creators from fraudulent, dangerous, illegal, and violative activities,” she emphasised.

According to Nur Azre, TikTok Shop adopts a four-pronged approach to safety, which includes Proactive Seller Screening, Proactive Product Listing Governance, Reactive Platform Policy Enforcement, and Safety by Design.

“We believe creating a trustworthy and secure environment for our community starts with prevention. To this end, TikTok Shop implements extensive proactive measures to screen sellers upon account registration and before products are listed,” she said.

Diving deeper, Nur Azre mentioned that all businesses must submit official documentation when applying to register for a TikTok Shop Seller Account.

These applications are said to be scrutinised closely to comply with applicable local regulations and TikTok Shop’s extensive policies, including ensuring that the Identity Card (IC) or relevant business certificates submitted match the corresponding TikTok Shop account and bank account details.

Even the store names of all sellers must strictly adhere to a comprehensive set of guidelines to ensure accurate business representation, such as restrictions on terms like “Official”, “Flagship”, or “Authorised”.

“With these preventive processes, from July to December 2024, TikTok Shop has proactively declined 1.6 million seller account registrations globally that did not meet our rigorous standards,” said Nur Azre.

Once successfully registered, new sellers are then placed on a temporary probation period, with limited daily orders and product listings, to help familiarise themselves with TikTok Shop’s policies and stabilise their operations.

These policies include TikTok Shop’s Product Listing Guidelines, which explicitly outline prohibited products, including counterfeit and knockoffs.

“From July to December 2024, TikTok Shop has proactively rejected over 50 million product listing attempts worldwide that violate our guidelines,” Nur Azre explained.

Affiliate creators are similarly held to high standards under TikTok Shop’s Content Policy, which ensures responsible product promotions by prohibiting illegal activities, intellectual property (IP) rights infringement, misleading or false content, Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC), and more.

“However, there is no finish line when it comes to safety. Users are encouraged to directly report violative products, content, and sellers on TikTok Shop via the in-app reporting channel,” Nur Azre reminded.

Strict enforcement actions would be taken against any sellers or creators who breached the policies, based on TikTok Shop’s Seller Performance Evaluation Policy and Creator Performance Evaluation Guidelines.

Nur Azre highlighted that, worldwide between July and December 2024, TikTok Shop removed more than 90,000 listed products, disabled e-commerce features for more than 700,000 creators, and removed more than 450,000 sellers as a result of shop-level violations.

“In addition to our platform’s proactive and reactive governance, security is also embedded into users’ in-app shopping experience, through our Safety by Design approach,” she underscored.

All orders on TikTok Shop are protected by its robust Free Returns and Refunds Policy, which facilitates simplified and fair after-sales requests for customers. 

“TikTok Shop will continue collaborating with our community, regulators, and industry stakeholders to share insights, refine best practices, and shape forward-looking policies that promote a safe and vibrant e-commerce ecosystem for all, such as through our #ShopSafe scam prevention initiative,” Nur Azre concluded.

-- BERNAMA