Two e-commerce platforms operating in Malaysia have updated their merchant terms in the last six weeks. Shopee revised commission tiers on selected category groups. TikTok Shop adjusted seller policy on returns, dispute handling, and content compliance.
Both changes were communicated via merchant portal notifications. Neither was accompanied by a public press release. Both took effect inside 30 days of the announcement.
We pulled the diff between the old terms and the new terms for two seller accounts we have access to. The aggregate impact, for a mid-size merchant doing roughly RM 200,000 monthly GMV on each platform, ranges between a 1.2% and 2.4% reduction in net take-home margin. That number sounds small. For a merchant operating at 8% net margin, that 1.2% to 2.4% is between 15% and 30% of their profit.
Platforms have every right to adjust their terms. They are commercial businesses making commercial decisions. What is worth noting is the asymmetry of information. The platform knows the impact across thousands of merchants before the announcement. The individual merchant calculates the impact after the announcement, often after the new terms have already taken effect.
If you sell on any platform, the most important capability you can build right now is a merchant terms tracker. A spreadsheet. A monthly review. Anything that lets you spot a change before it changes your unit economics. The platforms will not warn you in time. They will inform you on schedule.
