Pinduoduo Enhances Traceability for Cross-Border Goods, Proactively Mitigates Import Compliance Risks

[Ebrun Original] On May 31st, Pinduoduo announced a new initiative to further optimize the cross-border shopping experience and strengthen its imported goods traceability system. The platform has released the "Special Governance Announcement on Strengthening the Verification of Overseas Circulation and Production Certificates," aiming to guide cross-border merchants in building a compliant business ecosystem and optimizing the operational and consumer environment from the source.

According to incomplete statistics, since late January this year, Pinduoduo has been continuously investing in and proactively advancing its ecosystem governance, having introduced over 40 comprehensive management measures covering areas such as product access, qualification reviews, advertising governance, and intellectual property protection.

So far in the first half of the year, the platform has steadily launched more than 20 special governance campaigns targeting products like Pinduoduo Beans, portable Wi-Fi devices, overseas film and TV resources, special lighting for fresh produce, children's cosmetics, as well as scenarios like cross-border e-commerce and live-streamed food sales.

The aforementioned announcement requires cross-border merchants to properly submit certificates for overseas brand circulation and production, ensuring the materials are objective, truthful, detailed, and logically sound.

For circulation proof, merchants can choose to provide evidence of "available for sale in offline stores overseas" or "available for sale on online platforms overseas." The former requires submitting sales videos from at least three large supermarkets or well-known chain pharmacies in the brand's country of origin, fully displaying the store environment and the entire process from taking the product off the shelf to completing payment and printing the receipt. The latter requires providing stable sales links from well-known overseas e-commerce platforms.

Overseas production proof mainly consists of four core materials: an official certificate of origin, valid factory registration and production qualifications, proof of production and processing agreements, and customs declaration documents for the branded goods within the last 90 days.

To effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of compliant merchants and consumers, the platform will take measures such as rejecting qualifications, restricting operations, delisting products, prohibiting new listings, and terminating cooperation against any fraudulent activities, including overdue submissions, non-compliant materials, fabricating overseas manufacturing backgrounds, or falsifying official documents.

In fact, Pinduoduo's cross-border business can be traced back to around 2019. At that time, the platform officially launched its "Global Shopping" section, introducing cross-border imported goods and attempting to expand into new categories beyond its original domestic group-buying model.

Initially, the business primarily relied on bonded warehouse pre-stocking and overseas direct shipping models, covering popular cross-border consumption areas such as beauty, maternal and infant products, and health supplements. In the following years, the platform continued to invest in the cross-border section through operational strategies like its "Billion Subsidies" program, attracting a number of cross-border merchants and gradually improving infrastructure from customs integration and logistics tracking to after-sales support.

Since entering 2024, Pinduoduo has further prioritized the compliance governance of cross-border categories and merchant qualification verification as part of its daily management focus. The release of this announcement on strengthening the verification of overseas circulation and production certificates represents the latest step in this ongoing long-term development process.

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