WHAT HAPPENED
Vietnam became the first country in Southeast Asia to explicitly write livestream selling into law as a separate provision. The Law on E-commerce (No. 122/2025/QH15) was passed by the National Assembly in December 2025 and took effect on July 1, 2026 — the document directly defines the concept of "livestream selling" and allocates responsibility among platform owners, intermediaries, and sellers. This was reported by Vietnam's official State Gazette (Chinhphu).
Details were provided by Decree 248/2026/NĐ-CP: according to Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), platforms are required to publicly disclose the rules for hosting livestreams — who hosts them, under what conditions, and what product and seller data is disclosed before purchase. In summer 2026, MoIT held a series of explanatory conferences for platforms and sellers.
Law enforcement also weighed in separately. In July 2026, the government portal Báo Chính phủ published a requirement to close "legal gaps" in livestream commerce: disclose livestream rules and ensure a functioning return and compensation mechanism. The context is simple — according to VCCI, the GMV of the four largest platforms (Shopee, TikTok Shop, Lazada, Tiki) in 2025 totaled approximately VND 429.7 trillion (~US$16.35 billion), growing about 34.8% year-on-year, and livestream is the fastest-growing channel within that sum.
WHAT IT MEANS
For a Russian seller eyeing Vietnam as the next market after Ozon and Wildberries, the signal is subtle but important: in Vietnam, transparency has ceased to be a marketing virtue and has become a condition for access to the channel. If you sell through a Vietnamese streamer partner and cannot show who exactly hosts the livestream, whose account it is, and under what conditions returns are accepted, you are operating in a gray zone that the regulator has already begun to close.
The second layer is channel economics. According to aggregated data from industry reviews and seller discussions for Q2 2026 (a summary of Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop fees), the effective platform rate for a seller in Vietnam falls in the 20–25% range after all discounts and advertising fees. Under such a load, every percentage point of returns eats into margin faster than traffic growth creates it. A transparent product listing during a livestream is not "trust for trust's sake" but a direct lever on returns.
The third layer is enforcement. Back in the first half of 2024, according to MoIT, market surveillance inspected 245 cases of e-commerce violations across six platforms and issued fines totaling approximately VND 3.3 billion — mainly for false product information and livestream violations. Since July 2026, regulators have a normative framework, and therefore a reason to inspect systematically rather than selectively.
The fourth layer is competitive. While some sellers continue the race for cheap traffic and "flash" livestreams with unverified products, a niche is opening up: a brand that shows a certificate, ingredients, the real seller, and clear return conditions during a livestream builds an audience with higher LTV. In Vietnam, this is no longer a hypothesis — it is what the regulator demands, and what consumers are gradually coming to expect.
VIETSMART EXPERT COMMENTARY
I regularly see the same mistake among Russian teams entering Vietnam through livestream: they hire a streamer based on the KPI of "sales per livestream" and fail to specify in the contract who is responsible for returns and for the accuracy of on-camera claims. In operations in Ho Chi Minh City, it looks like this: the livestream generates good revenue, but two weeks later the platform has returned 30% of orders, and there is no one to hold accountable — the streamer is already working with another brand. After the law took effect, this scheme became not just unprofitable but legally risky for the brand itself: the obligation to disclose information falls on the seller.
What we would do if we were in a Russian entrepreneur's shoes: before launching livestreams in Vietnam, we would lock down three things in the contract with the platform and the streamer — who discloses seller data, who accepts returns and within what timeframe, and what liability arises for false on-camera product claims. It's boring, but it is precisely this contract clause that protects margin more effectively than another round of traffic discounts.
CONCLUSIONS AND WHAT TO DO
- Review your contract with the Vietnamese platform and streamer: specify who discloses seller and product data before purchase, who accepts returns, and within what timeframe. Without this clause, you bear the regulatory risk yourself.
- Assemble a "product passport" for the livestream: certificates, ingredients, country of origin, real photos and videos of the warehouse. This is the same content required by Decree 248/2026/NĐ-CP — use it as a script for the streamer, not as a formality.
- Introduce a returns metric into the streamer's KPI on par with revenue. If a livestream drives sales but returns exceed 15%, the channel is unprofitable at current commissions — calculate this before the platform sends its report.
- Request confirmation from your supplier or partner that the seller is registered on the platform, and verify that the account hosting the livestream is linked to your legal entity or official distributor in Vietnam.
- Build into your 2027 plan an increase in the share of repeat purchases as the main KPI for the livestream channel: trust built on transparent information drives LTV, not a one-time sales spike.
Source: Vietnam.vn dated October 15, 2026