E-Commerce.. Between Economic Advantages & Legal Challenges?!
Digital e-commerce has become an important part of international trade exchanges, to include mechanisms for exchanging information across borders, and this has opened the door to challenges related to e-commerce systems, which are not limited to measuring the volume and value of trade exchange across borders, but also include freedom of movement, the flow of data between countries, and mechanisms and regulations to monitor them in a way that serves their protection, and in order to achieve the goal of expanding the retail sectors within the scope of the local and international digital economy.
E-commerce has played a significant role in the transformation of the global economy, especially after the COVID-19 crisis, which resulted in an urgent need for exchange. According to UNCTAD's 2021 report, online retail sales increased by 22.4 percent in 2020, reaching $2.5 trillion, compared to an increase of 15.1 percent between 2018.and 2019. Global e-commerce sales in 2024 reached more than $6 trillion, representing an increase of 8.4 percent. The number of online shoppers around the world reached about 2.71 billion people in 2024.
It is certain that the expansion of e-commerce requires not only preparedness and the availability of infrastructure, but also the availability of appropriate quality of legislation regulating it, which supports its success and the achievement of its economic advantages, at the national and international levels. In view of the increasing interest in e-commerce as it is the present and future of global trade, it is necessary to highlight the most important economic advantages, and the accompanying legislative challenges, as one of the most prominent economic benefits of the expansion of e-commerce is to reduce costs through direct sales by reducing the number of points of sale and branches required by dealing with trade in general, and retail activities in particular.Abundant self-service options for customers, which enables them to use the Internet to purchase anytime and anywhere. E-commerce also contributes to the establishment of a customer database that is used in the activity or in other activities carried out by the company (or even sold to other companies), and this data creates an area to support the expansion in other sectors, making it able to benefit from it in increasing its market control. E-commerce will penetrate more online markets and encourage the entry of more small retailers who offer self-service options electronically, selling to customers without being under the umbrella of certain companies that cannot be easily targeted by tax and regulatory authorities, especially in developing countries.
Digitalization has opened up new business opportunities where business transactions can be completed quickly, agreements can be concluded and executed entirely electronically. Technological changes have also revolutionized modern trade, particularly with regard to the form and enforceability of contracts concluded and executed electronically, and ensuring the authenticity of digital signatures and records.
But despite this, the development of the reality of e-commerce coincides with the increasing activity of legal challenges and transactions, starting from the process of displaying the product electronically to reaching dealing with the supply chain, which allows the field for monopolistic tendencies, and commercial disputes between merchants, or between merchants and consumers are present, and need a flexible legal system that deals with them. The system regulating it is not only the e-commerce system, but extends to the corporate system, the intellectual property system, the data protection system, laws related to media, advertising, and other related systems.
For example, obtaining customer data online is a critical point related to privacy and also gives companies a good opportunity to dominate the market, which means that there are need for balanced legislative and regulatory requirements to ensure that the desired economic benefits are achieved, if we are talking on a national scale, but the advantage of e-commerce is that it is also cross-border, so the challenge is great.
In conclusion, it can be said that e-commerce is a rapidly evolving field, which requires constantly updating legislation and regulations, including regulatory steps to protect consumers, and this means relying on many legal areas, such as contracts, the right to privacy, and double taxation issues.
