ECT Act South Africa: What Your Online Store Must Show, and Where to Build It

The ECT Act requires a South African online store selling to consumers to show who it is, how to reach it, the full price, payment and delivery terms, its returns policy and its security practices. Buyers must be able to review an order before paying, and most goods carry a seven-day cooling-off right.

What does the ECT Act require from an online store?

Chapter VII of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, mostly section 43, lists the information a supplier selling goods or services online to consumers must make available on its website. Grouped in plain terms, the list covers six areas:

• Who you are: your full legal name and legal status, and for a company, its registration number, the names of its office bearers and where it is registered.
• How to reach you: a physical address, telephone number, email address and website address, plus an address where legal documents can be served.
• What you sell and what it costs: a sufficient description of the goods or services, and the full price including transport costs, taxes and any other fees.
• Payment, delivery and records: how the buyer pays, when goods are dispatched or delivered, the terms of the agreement, and how the buyer can access and keep a full record of the transaction.
• Returns and complaints: your return, exchange and refund policy, any dispute resolution code you subscribe to, and the buyer's cooling-off rights under section 44.
• Security and privacy: your security procedures and privacy policy for payment information and personal information.

Section 43 also asks for things a page cannot do. Section 43(2) requires that the buyer can review the whole transaction, correct mistakes and withdraw before placing the order. Section 43(5) says the payment system must be "sufficiently secure with reference to accepted technological standards". If a store leaves out the required information or the review step, section 43(3) says "the consumer may cancel the transaction within 14 days of receiving the goods or services".

"Consumer" here means a person buying as the end user. A company buying for its own business is not covered by Chapter VII, but most stores sell to the public, so assume it applies to you. The Consumer Protection Act and POPIA apply alongside it, not instead of it, which is why privacy and consent need their own design work, as in our piece on building consent into a website's architecture. This is a build view, not legal advice. Have an attorney read your terms before you launch.

Why a legal page in the footer does not cover it

The guides that rank for the ECT Act are written by law firms, so they treat compliance as a drafting job: get the terms written, paste them on a page, link the page in the footer. The drafting matters. But much of section 43 is about how the store behaves. The full price including delivery has to be correct at the moment the buyer commits. The review step lives inside checkout. The record of the transaction is something the system has to keep and send. A pasted terms page does none of that, and it goes stale. The business moves, delivery times change, a new director is appointed, and nobody remembers the page written at launch.

The stakes are growing. South African online retail reached R71 billion in 2023, up 29% on 2022, according to World Wide Worx with Mastercard, Peach Payments and Ask Afrika. The same release reports that only 18.6% of South African consumers regarded it as safe and secure to shop online. When fewer than one in five South African consumers regard online shopping as safe and secure, the visible proof that a real, reachable business stands behind the store is part of what you sell. Regulators are paying attention too: a March 2026 paper by the National Consumer Commission and the Consumer Goods and Services Ombud recommends amending section 43 so its product descriptions match the detail the Consumer Protection Act requires.

We have handled the same problem under a different law. On a French overseas-territory online shop we built in 20 days for corporate buyers and retail customers, the legal mentions French law requires were built into the platform during the build. The same team owned them alongside the technical configuration and the Stripe payment routing, including confirming orders from Stripe webhook events. They were not a page someone added the week before launch. The rules there were French, not the ECT Act, but the point carries over: when the legal information and the checkout are owned by the same people, one does not quietly drift out of step with the other.

How to build ECT Act disclosures into your store

Treat the section 43 list as data, not as a page. Keep one company record in the store's admin (legal name, registration number, directors, addresses, phone, email) and have the footer, the legal page, the checkout and the order confirmation email all read from it. Show the full price including delivery and VAT on the checkout summary, before the pay button. Build a real review screen where the buyer sees items, quantities, price and delivery and can edit or back out. Save which version of the terms each buyer accepted, with a timestamp, against the order, and send the record in the confirmation email. Use a payment provider that holds the card data so you never store card numbers, because the Act puts the loss on the supplier if an insecure payment system is breached. If you sell personalised or made-to-order goods, flag them per product, since some goods are excluded from the cooling-off right.

When you brief a developer, ask one question: if our address changes, how many places do we edit? If the answer is more than one, the disclosures will drift. On a custom store this belongs in the web app development scope from the first week, next to checkout, not in a list of launch-week tasks. On a template platform, check whether the theme can pull company details from one setting and whether checkout lets you add a terms acceptance step that is recorded. Our guide to choosing an ecommerce website in South Africa covers that platform decision.

If you sell to the public online, the ECT Act already applies to you, and the cheapest time to meet it is while checkout is being built. A store selling only to other businesses has less to worry about under Chapter VII, though its terms still need an attorney. Owning the legal mentions together with the payment flow is how we built that shop, and it is how I would build any store that has to stay correct after launch.

Questions about the ECT Act

Does the ECT Act apply to a one-person online shop?

Yes. The ECT Act does not set a size threshold. If you sell goods or services online to people buying as end users, Chapter VII applies whether you are a registered company or a sole proprietor working from home. A sole proprietor still has to show a name, contact details, prices, delivery terms and a returns policy.

What happens if my online store does not show the section 43 information?

The buyer gets a right to cancel. Section 43(3) says the consumer may cancel the transaction within 14 days of receiving the goods or services if the store failed to provide the required information or the review step. The buyer returns the goods, and the store must refund all payments, less the direct cost of returning them.

Is there a cooling-off period for online purchases in South Africa?

Yes. Section 44 of the ECT Act lets a consumer cancel an online purchase without reason or penalty within seven days of receiving the goods, or of concluding the agreement for services. The store may only charge the direct cost of returning the goods and must refund the buyer within 30 days of cancellation.

Does the seven-day cooling-off period apply to every product?

No. Section 42(2) excludes some transactions from the cooling-off right, including goods made to the buyer's specifications or clearly personalised, goods that deteriorate quickly, everyday foodstuffs delivered to the home, unsealed audio, video and software, and services already started with the buyer's consent. The other section 43 disclosures still apply to these products.

Are click-to-accept online terms legally binding in South Africa?

Yes, in general. The ECT Act confirms that an agreement is not invalid simply because it was concluded electronically, and clicking to accept can express agreement. The store should show the terms before acceptance, record which version each buyer accepted with a timestamp, and send that record with the order confirmation.

Do I need to show my company registration number and directors on my website?

Yes, if your store is run by a company or another legal person. Section 43(1) requires a legal person to show its registration number, the names of its office bearers and its place of registration. A sole proprietor has no registration number to show but still needs a full name and legal status.

Do I still need to follow the Consumer Protection Act and POPIA?

Yes. The ECT Act sits alongside the Consumer Protection Act and POPIA, not in place of them. The ECT Act covers online disclosures, the review step, secure payment and cooling-off. The Consumer Protection Act covers wider consumer rights such as product quality and returns, and POPIA covers how you collect and use personal information.