EMOTA launches European trustmark for ecommerce

The European Multi-channel and Online Trade Association launched its European trustmark for online merchants yesterday. The association, which claims to represent more than 80% of the ecommerce industry in Europe, establishes harmonized certificate criteria for all national trustmarks in Europe.

EMOTA’s goal is to improve the customers’ confidence in online shopping across border, as well as increase the cross-border turnover for European online stores. The European trustmark should also overcome the language barriers of national trustmarks.

European trustmark to assure safety
The use of a trustmark is particularly important for SMEs, as their own brand is often not well known. The aim of our European trustmark is to assure consumers all over Europe that the online store bearing it has been validated by an EMOTA accredited trustmark provider and found to be safe” said Walter Devenuto, the President of EMOTA.

A further step to boost confidence in cross border #ecommerce pic.twitter.com/ttHf9ZdQ3d

— EMOTA eCommerce (@EMOTA_ECOM) March 13, 2014

According to the organization, there are still some barriers in the ecommerce industry that need to be overcome, both on the consumer side and on the side of the online retailers. The EMOTA trustmark tries to help get over consumers’ trust-related resistance when it comes to online shopping. The organization agreed on a strict set of accreditation criteria, these wil guarantee that consumers get excellent service when they buy something from an online store that’s a member of one of the national trustmarks. “Compliance with our criteria will be monitored and traders not acting in conformity with the codes of conduct of our accredited trustmarks will lose the benefit of displaying our European label on their websites”, said Susanne Czech, Secretary General of EMOTA.

Members of European trustmark for ecommerce
EMOTA has its office in Brussels and members are: Handelsverband (Austria), Safeshops.be (Belgium), ASML (Finland), bvh (Germany), Bundesverband der Deutschen Versandbuchhändler (also Germany), EPAM (Greece), ACSEL (France), Magyar Áruküldök Egyesülete (Hungary), Netcomm (Italy), Acepi (Portugal), Allegro Group (also Portugal) and Namo (Russia).