The account that used to open in an afternoon now opens after a file. A European marketplace has to obtain a defined set of information about every professional seller, make reasonable efforts to check it against independent sources, and keep it up to date for as long as the relationship lasts. Sellers who read this as an obstacle argue with the support agent. Sellers who read it as an obligation on the platform prepare the file, because the platform has no discretion to waive it.
What the platform is required to collect
- Your legal identity. The registered name of the company and its registered address, as they appear in the register — not the trading name, not the factory address, not the office where the sales team sits.
- An identity document for the representative. The person who legally represents the company, with a document that matches the name on the register, in the same transcription and the same order.
- Bank details. A payment account belonging to the verified seller, used for the payouts. An account in another entity's name is the classic reason a payout stops.
- A registration number. The entry in the trade register, or the equivalent identifier for your form of company, together with the extract that proves it is current.
- A tax identification where applicable. The value added tax number for the country concerned, when your activity makes you liable there — holding stock in a member state is the situation that most often creates it.
- A self-certification on your products. A statement that you will offer only products and services that comply with European law, which is why the conformity file and the economic operator established in the Union come up in the same conversation.
Note the difference between supplying information and being verified. The platform is expected to make reasonable efforts to assess whether what you sent is reliable, using freely accessible official databases and other independent sources. So a document that cannot be cross-checked is worth less than one that can, a scan of poor quality stalls the file, and a value that does not reconcile with the public register triggers a manual review that is handled by a different team on a different clock. The file is not read by the person who sells you the service.
Who counts as a trader, and what the consumer gets to see
The platform also has to establish whether you act as a trader, and to tell the consumer which it is. The answer determines whether the whole body of consumer protection applies to your sales — the legal guarantee, the right of withdrawal, the pre-contractual information. Declaring yourself a private seller to escape that is not a grey area: it is a misleading practice, it is detectable from your own volumes and your own catalogue, and when the platform reclassifies the account the obligations apply retrospectively to the sales already made. Part of what you supply is also not kept in a drawer. The platform has to make the trader's identity and contact details available to consumers, so your registered name, your address and a way of reaching you appear beside the brand the customer thinks he is buying from. For many Chinese sellers that is the first time the legal entity behind an attractive European store name becomes visible, and it is worth deciding deliberately rather than discovering it: which entity sells, what name consumers will read, which address they will see, and which mailbox and telephone number actually get answered during European working hours.
Why an inconsistent file freezes the money, not just the account
The consequences are graduated and they bite in the wrong order for a seller's cash. An incomplete file delays the opening. An inconsistency found later suspends the listings, then the account. And because the payout runs on the verified identity, a mismatch between the account holder and the verified seller holds the funds until the contradiction is resolved — which means the money for goods already shipped sits still while you assemble documents. Recovery is manual, slow, and handled by people who cannot see your season.
- The name in a different transcription. The register says one Latin spelling, the account another, the invoices another still. Pick the register's and use it everywhere, including the brand's legal notices.
- The representative's name in the other order. Surname and given name inverted between the identity document and the register is enough to send the file to manual review.
- A payment account in someone else's name. A group company, a trading agent, a director personally, or a provider whose own name appears as the holder. The holder has to reconcile with the verified seller.
- A registration number belonging to a related entity. Groups with several companies submit the extract of whichever one was easiest to obtain, and the number then fails to match the name.
- A tax number that does not match the name. The identifier is checkable in a public database, with the name attached to it. If they disagree, the platform sees it immediately.
- An address that exists in no register. A warehouse, a service office or a forwarder's address given as the registered seat. The registered seat is the one in the extract.
Why the platform, the customs file and the tax file must read the same
These files cross-reference each other, and that is the part sellers underestimate. The platform reports the transactions of its sellers to tax administrations. Customs declarations name an importer and a declared value for the goods that arrived. Tax returns declare sales by country. When the entity selling on the platform is not the entity named on the customs declaration, and neither is the entity filing the return, the contradiction is visible to administrations that now exchange information — and it surfaces as a question long after the season, when the people who built the arrangement have moved on and nobody can explain it.
- Decide which legal entity sells to the European consumer. Every other answer in this article derives from that one, and changing it later means a new account, a new verification and the loss of the history attached to the old one.
- Line up the identity documents on that entity: register extract, representative's identity document, proof of address, all in the same name and the same transcription.
- Open the payment account in that entity's name before applying, not after the first payout is held.
- Settle the tax registrations the activity requires, and the importer named on the customs declarations, so that the platform, the customs file and the tax file describe the same seller.
- Then prepare the product side: the conformity file, the economic operator established in the Union where the rules require one, and the European return address. Platforms ask for these in the same onboarding, and a missing one stops it just as effectively.
Build the file in a single place, and treat the register extract as the master copy: every name, address and number used on the platform, on the invoices, in the legal notices of your store, on the customs declarations and in the tax registrations is copied from it rather than retyped. Then put one named person in charge of keeping it current, because the suspension usually arrives not from a document you never had but from one that expired, or from an address that changed in the register and nowhere else.
Where to read it yourself
Official pages, opened and checked on 15 October 2026. Where a rule changes, these are the addresses that change with it — this article does not.