What is ETBİS?
ETBİS (Elektronik Ticaret Bilgi Sistemi, the Electronic Commerce Information System) is the registration and notification system operated by Türkiye’s Ministry of Trade under the secondary legislation of E-Commerce Law No. 6563. Service providers selling through their own website or mobile app, and intermediary service providers (platforms), must register before starting e-commerce activity and must periodically report specified data, including sales volumes.
Who registers, who does not
- Merchants selling only on marketplaces do not open their own ETBİS record: the duty sits with the platform. Anyone with their own storefront — site or app — is in scope;
- Registration covers domain names and mobile applications; changes must be notified within 30 days;
- Intermediary platforms register in their own right and carry the reporting burden for the activity running through them — see platform business model;
- Non-registration draws administrative fines under Law No. 6563 and is trivially detectable: the system is publicly searchable by anyone.
The legal dimension
ETBİS is a gatekeeping formality with contractual consequences. In due diligence and investment rounds, ETBİS registration is a standard representation, and a missing or stale record surfaces as a red-flag item. The reported sales data also gives the Ministry a supervision base for the wider Law No. 6563 regime — commercial electronic communications and the order-confirmation duties owed to consumers in B2C sales. Registration is not a licence: it does not certify that what the site sells is lawful, and sector-specific rules apply on top of it.
Turkish practice for startups
For e-commerce ventures ETBİS sits at the top of the incorporation compliance list alongside VERBİS: one registry for commerce, the other for personal data under KVKK. The practical sequence is simple: register before the first sale, keep the record current within the 30-day window, and check the entry before every financing round, because counterparties will. Marketplace sellers should still confirm in writing that the platform carries the ETBİS burden for their sales. Keeping screenshots of the record and the notification dates in the corporate records file makes proving the representation a matter of minutes in a later round.
Do: register before going live and keep the record aligned with the domains and apps you actually operate. Don’t: assume a marketplace presence exempts your own storefront, or leave old domains sitting in the record after a rebrand.
Sources. Law No. 6563 on the Regulation of Electronic Commerce. Statute links open the official consolidated Turkish texts on mevzuat.gov.tr.