Reason for proposal and main contents

In the case of the recent unsettled sales payments incidents involving TMON and WeMakePrice, there are suspicions that these mail order brokerage companies exploited gaps in current laws to  delay the payment of payable money until the payment due date. Large enterprises’ distributors are required by law to pay payable money within 40 to 60 days (under Article 8 of the Act on Fair Transactions in Large Retail Businesses), but the insufficiency of the regulations in the Act on the Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce was found to have caused issues. 

In the case of small and medium business operators selling goods and services through existing cybermalls, sales payment often remains unsettled for as much as two months due to the delayed processing of warehousing by mail order brokerage companies. When analyzing the payment periods of mail order brokerage companies such as Coupang, WeMakePrice, and TMON, it appears that each company sets a settlement period ranging anywhere from 1 to 60 days for their convenience.

Therefore, the proposed revision stipulates the separate management of settlement funds to prevent e-commerce brokerage companies from misappropriating settlement funds, and so that sanctions such as business suspension may be imposed for violations (Newly established Article 8-2 of the draft). It also stipulates the mandatory settlement periods of mail order brokerage companies (e-commerce) (Newly established Article 20 (4) and Article 20 (5) of the draft).