The Ministry of Commerce in Saudi Arabia is working on promoting compliance and protecting the rights of online shoppers through a new initiative to evaluate electronic commerce platforms using artificial intelligence methods. This project was unveiled on Friday to coincide with World Consumer Rights Day, under the theme “The Responsibility of Artificial Intelligence and How It Works Justly for Users.”
The ministry stated that the objective of the initiative is to increase the level of compliance among Saudi electronic commerce platforms, and that this initiative is a means for merchants to know the level of assessment of their online stores, with the possibility of making improvements to this assessment once they agree to work with the approved standards.
Eleven fundamental criteria have been identified upon which the compliance assessment of stores is based. These criteria include displaying the commercial registration number, necessary permits, and tax number clearly on the homepage of the website, ensuring that the store’s link is officially registered in the commercial registry and on the Saudi Business Center platform, providing policies that include “consumer information protection and privacy,” “exchange, return, and refund of payments,” methods of “handling customer complaints and suggestions,” as well as “customer rights and responsibilities in shipping and delivery” on the e-commerce platform.
The criteria also include providing convenient contact methods for customer services within the store, the necessity of owning a secure and high-quality website that includes fast loading speeds and easy navigation, having a secure link containing information protection, and lastly, there must not be any outstanding financial violations “incompliant” against the establishment.
