1240The Southeast Asian e-commerce market has been heating up in recent years. As one of the leading platforms in the region, Shopee has recently launched three major new policies on its Vietnam site, covering order fulfillment timeliness, infrastructure service fees, and product quality assessment systems. These adjustments are both measures to optimize the platform’s ecosystem and new operational challenges for sellers.
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Order Fulfillment Timeliness Tightened
Shopee Vietnam has updated the order processing deadline for local sellers, clearly requiring that courier delivery orders must be stocked within the specified time. If the delayed delivery rate exceeds 10%, sellers will face fines. Although this policy sets a short-term buffer period, strict enforcement is inevitable in the future, meaning sellers must improve logistics efficiency or face increased operating costs.
For small and medium-sized sellers, the risks of relying on third-party logistics are further magnified. They need to reassess the timeliness and stability of their partners, and may even consider using Shopee’s third-party warehouse services to reduce fulfillment risks. At the same time, inventory management must become more refined to avoid affecting order processing speed due to shortened stocking cycles.
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Infrastructure Service Fee Adjustment
Shopee Vietnam announced that starting from July 1, a new infrastructure fee of 3,000 VND per order will be charged to cross-border direct mail, third-party warehouse, and Nanning warehouse sellers, citing the need to optimize resource allocation and support healthy ecosystem development. However, this adjustment undoubtedly increases sellers’ operating costs, especially further squeezing the profit margins of low-priced products.
Cross-border sellers may need to reassess their business models, such as switching to local warehouses to avoid extra fees, but this also means higher inventory costs and financial pressure. For the platform, the fee adjustment may help filter for higher-quality sellers, but it could also dampen the enthusiasm of some small and medium-sized sellers.
In the future, sellers will need to optimize their product selection, increase average order value, or explore localized operations to offset rising costs, while the platform must balance service upgrades with reasonable fees to avoid losing sellers due to excessive charges.
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Product Quality Rating System Upgrade
Shopee Vietnam has replaced the original defective product rating rate (NRP) with a new “Product Quality Negative Rating Rate (PQR)”. Products with PQR≥20% will be forcibly removed from shelves, and stores that do not improve over time will face penalty points and activity restrictions. This policy elevates product quality control to a new level. If sellers receive a large number of low-star ratings due to product mismatch, poor quality, or bad after-sales service, it will directly affect product survival rates.
This means that the previous traffic-driven, rough operational model is no longer sustainable. Sellers must pay more attention to user experience and systematically optimize everything from product quality inspection to after-sales follow-up. For example, establishing pre-shipment quality inspection processes, proactively guiding buyers to revise negative reviews, and analyzing negative feedback to iterate products.
For the platform, stricter quality control helps enhance consumer trust, but it may also increase sellers’ operational burden. How to raise standards while maintaining a vibrant seller ecosystem will be a key issue Shopee needs to balance in the future.
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Conclusion: Platform Evolution and Seller Pathways under New Policies
The three new policies of Shopee Vietnam mark the platform’s transformation from scale expansion to refined operations.
For sellers, they must cope with rising costs and compliance pressure in the short term, but in the long run, only by improving efficiency and optimizing services can they stand out under the new regulations. For the platform, these adjustments help optimize the ecosystem, but it must also be wary of dampening seller enthusiasm due to overly strict policies.
In the future, the competitive landscape of Vietnam’s e-commerce market will change. The focus of competition will no longer be limited to price, but will shift more to supply chain efficiency and user experience. Whether sellers or platforms, only by continuously adapting to changes and strengthening core competitiveness can they gain an edge in this upgrade battle.
