What does the digital product passport mean if I sell products via an online marketplace?

What you must do concretely

Offering products through an online marketplace feels like a separate branch of sales for many companies, separate from the "normal" obligations that come with being a manufacturer or importer. For the digital product passport, that is not how it works. The marketplace itself gets a role, but that does not change the obligations of whoever actually sells the product.

What is expected of you

The passport must already exist before the product is listed on the marketplace

A product passport does not come into existence by being offered on a marketplace — it must already be there at the moment the product comes onto the market. For a company that sells through a marketplace, this means that the question "who creates the passport" must be answered before the first listing goes online, not after. Whoever is themselves a manufacturer or importer is Who is responsible for the product passport for products? often already answered on other pages, but in sales via a marketplace that question is often raised only late, because attention goes to the listing itself.

The marketplace checks, but does not assume the obligation

Article 35 of the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) imposes its own role on providers of online marketplaces and search engines: they must make efforts to verify that the products offered via their platform comply with the information obligations applicable to that product — including the product passport. For a selling party with 10 to 100 employees, this practically means that the marketplace can ask for a passport, a link to the data carrier, or proof that a passport exists, before a listing is approved or remains listed. That verification by the marketplace is not a replacement for the company's own obligation; that remains with the manufacturer, importer or distributor itself, as follows from Articles 30 and 31 of the ESPR.

Your own role in the chain remains decisive

Whoever sells via a marketplace is often in practice a distributor or trader of products made or imported by someone else. The obligations that come with that — verifying that the passport is present, not offering products without a valid QR data carrier, and responding if there is doubt about the accuracy of the data — are described on the page about What obligations does a distributor or trader of products have?. A company that does not change anything about the product itself, but does place it on a marketplace under its own name, would do well to determine in advance which role exactly applies, because that role determines what obligations apply.

Own brand changes things

Some companies sell on a marketplace under their own brand name, while the product is made somewhere else. That situation can shift the obligations: whoever places a product on the market under their own brand may be considered a manufacturer, with all the obligations that come with it. What that concretely means is explained on the page I sell products under my own brand — what obligations do I incur?. For marketplace sales, this is one of the most underestimated points: the listing looks like "resale", while the legal role is actually "manufacturer".

Visibility of the passport in the listing itself

A product passport that does exist, but is not accessible from the listing, creates the same problems in practice as a passport that does not exist. For sales via a marketplace, this means that the QR data carrier or a reference to it must appear in the product information — not only on the packaging that the customer receives at home, but also in the digital environment in which the product is offered, insofar as that applies to that product and that marketplace.

Where things go wrong in practice

A few situations come up regularly with companies that sell via marketplaces:

• The listing goes online before the passport is ready. Marketing and sales often operate at a different pace than the administrative side of the passport, which means a product is already for sale while the data is still being collected.
• A marketplace asks for proof, and nobody in the company knows who should provide it. Especially for companies purchasing from a manufacturer outside the EU, it becomes unclear who has the data and who may share it — a question that is also addressed on the page My manufacturer is located outside the EU — who arranges the digital product passport then?.
• Private label products are placed on the marketplace without the allocation of roles with the original manufacturer being established. When the marketplace or a supervisory authority asks questions, it turns out that no one can properly demonstrate who supplied which data — see also the explanation on who is liable for the product passport in the case of private label products.
• One listing is used for sales in multiple EU countries, without verifying whether there are national differences that affect the listing or the product passport, as described on the page on are there different rules per EU country for the product passport.
• The marketplace removes a listing due to a missing product passport, and the company only discovers at that moment that there was no product passport, with direct loss of revenue as a result.

What you can document

For companies selling via a marketplace, it is useful to put down in writing, among other things, the following:

• Who within the company is responsible for ensuring that a valid product passport is in place before a listing goes live.
• From which supplier or manufacturer the product passport data comes, and at what moment it was received and checked.
• Agreements with the marketplace itself about which evidence is requested and how it is provided.
• The allocation of roles with a possible manufacturer outside the EU, especially when that manufacturer has not appointed an authorised representative in the EU .
• A fixed procedure for what happens if data in the product passport proves to be incorrect, including who is held accountable — see also the page on who is liable if the product passport contains incorrect information.
• An overview per product category of whether the product passport is actually applicable, based on the page on Does the digital product passport apply to my products?.

Whoever puts these points down in writing can quickly show a marketplace or supervisory authority what has been done and why when they ask — and that is precisely the moment when a documented procedure makes all the difference compared to an explanation after the fact.