The whole world is switching to the e-commerce platform as a major shopping platform to avoid unnecessary in interaction specially during the tough days of covid-19. It is very crucial to understand the right type of license that should be registered in order to conduct your business ethically in the United Arab Emirates. Let’s all agree that you SHOULD choose an emirate that your Business Activity is going to be covering. Again, if you choose Dubai as an emirate that your license will be registered at, you will not be able to serve other emirates without permits.
For instance, projecting Dubai as a destination to have an ecommerce business requires forming a Mainland license since it allows you to sell and deliver products to end users over the mainland of the respective emirate. We normally receive lots of inquiries of entrepreneurs who want to establish a Free Zone license in order to have a business similar to Amazon for example and sell products of others, but we always say that if you do so you will not be able to deliver products outside the Free Zone jurisdiction. Also, according to the UAE legislations, a Free Zone company can conduct business only inside the Free Zone Authority.
We don’t underestimate Free Zone options, but just encourage entrepreneurs to start their business in the right way and without any misunderstanding of any element that can eventually lead to having the wrong license.
The Ideal Business Activity of having a website similar to Amazon “previously called Souq”’ is to have a Portal Business Activity that allows firms to have and operate websites that act as portals to the internet, via PCs and digital devices in order to link buyers and sellers as well as services providers and users together to make deals, it also involves listing sellers’ products as well as hotel rates to make consumers shop online and travelers to make hotel reservations. The role of such firms is restricted to brokerage only apart from finalizing the transactions between said parties, meanwhile, selling your own products online requires having a Trading business activity that by nature allows you to sell products whether through a retail space of online without any complications.
