The GP Fee Cut Is Not Enough: 4 Things the Commerce Ministry's Measure Does Not Change, and Why SMEs Should Own an E-Commerce Website

Picture a stall in a big weekend night market. The crowds are packed in every Saturday and Sunday, and your stall sells something every week. One day the village head and the market owner announce together that stall rent will be reduced for six months starting next month.

Good news, right? Of course it is. Anyone who qualifies gets real money back. But read the announcement a little more carefully and you find that only the stall rent is reduced. The lit sign that gets people to notice your stall is not on the list. The reduction lasts six months. You need to be properly registered and stay under a sales cap. And which stalls get the spot by the entrance is the market owner's call, not yours.

This really happened to online selling in Thailand on 28 October 2026, and the night market is the picture I will use all the way through this article.

What the announcement says, and what I read

First, a disclosure: I have not opened the Commerce Ministry's full announcement myself. Everything here comes from four Thai news outlets reporting the same story: Thansettakij, Bangkok Biz News, MGR Online and Thai Rath. The main points agree across all four, while some smaller details differ. I will flag each one where it comes up.

What they agree on: the Deputy Prime Minister and Commerce Minister (Supajee) announced on 28 October 2026 that the ministry, together with Shopee, TikTok Shop and Lazada, would reduce the mandatory fees, which people commonly call the GP fee, for qualifying sellers. The period is six months, from 1 December 2026 to 31 May 2027. The outlets report about 1.2 million qualifying sellers and an estimated total fee relief of around 1,930 million baht.

The fee rates before and after, as reported:

• Shopee: from 8.03 to 19.26%, down to 8.03 to 13.91%

• TikTok Shop: from 13.38 to 21.94%, down to 11.24 to 17.66%

• Lazada: from 9.00 to 17.50%, down to 7.50 to 11.60%

The reports say the rates return to the level of 1 January 2026, and each range depends on product category. Importantly, none of the outlets says whether these figures include or exclude VAT, so I cannot tell you the tax basis. Anyone using these numbers for a real calculation should check the Seller Center to see what basis the deducted rate is calculated on. As for the "maximum reduction" percentage that several outlets put in their headlines, it is calculated per category, so I am not using it in this article.

This is good news, and I am not arguing otherwise

If your shop qualifies, lower fees for six months is real money going back into your pocket. I do not think anyone should ignore this measure, and I do not think owning a website means rushing out of the platforms. The three platforms are still where customers go looking for products every day.

What I want to point at is the part the announcement does not cover, because a decision about sales channels should rest on the full picture of costs and risks, not on the headline alone.

Check whether your shop qualifies

The conditions the outlets agree on: sellers must register as an e-commerce business (the Thai "electronic commerce registration") and keep annual sales under a cap, which is 1.8 million baht for individuals. For the cap for juristic persons, the outlets report different numbers, so I am not stating one. Check the official announcement or the message the platform sends your shop.

The outlets report that the platforms will send invitations to eligible sellers from 1 November 2026, and sellers must pass a qualification check before receiving the benefit. If you are unsure about registration, ask the Department of Business Development or your provincial commerce office directly. I am not a source of advice on that.

On which product categories qualify, the outlets differ, so I am not listing categories. What two outlets state clearly is that electronic products are excluded. If your products sit in an unclear category, confirm with the platform before building a financial plan around the discount.

Four things this announcement does not change

Advertising and promotion remain outside the measure

MGR Online reports that the measure covers mandatory fees: commission, infrastructure service fees and transaction fees. It does not cover optional services the seller chooses, such as advertising or product promotion. Thai Rath reports the same: voluntary fees are not part of the program.

I need to be careful here. I searched and found no evidence confirming that a seller must buy ads to be visible on these platforms, so I will not write that. What can be confirmed is that advertising is not part of the measure and that the shop chooses whether to use it. How much your shop relies on in-platform ads is a number you can read in your own Seller Center. Look at advertising spend as a share of sales for the latest month and you will see how much this weighs on your shop.

The measure expires

The reduced-fee period ends on 31 May 2027. Platform representatives committed that this cut will not come with increases to other fees, but the reports do not say what happens after the measure ends. A shop doing long-term cost planning should not treat the rates of this period as the baseline forever.

Eligibility depends on conditions, so not every shop gets the same

As above, a shop must register, stay under the sales cap and sell products in qualifying categories. A shop over the cap, or selling electronics, may not get this discount at all. If your annual sales are close to the cap, it is worth checking that number regularly.

Display rules and the customer relationship remain with the platform

This one is my own reading of the structure, not something from the news. A shop on a marketplace works under rules the platform sets. The shop does not write those rules. On your own website, the rules of the storefront are entirely in your hands.

A worked example with numbers

Suppose a qualifying shop sells 100,000 baht a month (a made-up sales figure for easy math, with no VAT basis implied). If the shop sits at the top of the post-cut rate range, the fees at the announced rates would be as follows. The reports do not say whether these rates include or exclude VAT, so each line notes that the tax basis is unknown.

• Shopee: about 13,910 baht per month (VAT basis unknown)

• TikTok Shop: about 17,660 baht per month (VAT basis unknown)

• Lazada: about 11,600 baht per month (VAT basis unknown)

A shop whose products fall in a lower-rate category pays less accordingly. This is simply the rate multiplied straight through, to show the size of the sum. It is not what your shop will actually be charged.

The point is that even after the cut, the fee is still a sum leaving your sales every month. If you want to see how to work out the monthly sales at which your own website starts to pay off, I wrote it up in detail in the break-even article on commission versus owning your own website. That article uses the rates from before this measure, and I am not recalculating it here so that two sets of numbers do not contradict each other.

So where does your own e-commerce website help?

First, plainly: your own website does not get customers walking in by itself on day one either. The night market already has crowds. Your own shop has to be known, whether through Google, social media, LINE or word of mouth from existing customers. A website does not replace the platforms. It is something added alongside them.

Three things genuinely change. The first is that no marketplace GP or commission is taken from your sales. But understand the full picture: a website has its own costs, such as fees charged by the payment gateway provider you choose, domain and hosting, shipping, and advertising if you want to bring people to the site. Payment gateway rates depend on each provider, so I am not quoting numbers. Ask about them when you talk to the web team.

The second is that the storefront rules are yours. You set prices, arrange product pages, issue coupons and tell your brand story entirely yourself, without competing on the same search page as other shops. The third is that order and customer data sit in your own back office. You know who bought again, what they bought and when, and you can follow up yourself. That is what makes a repeat customer truly your shop's customer.

A real case that tells this story well is Dr.PONG, a brand that chose to build its own sales channel instead of relying only on paying GP to platforms. I covered it in the Dr.PONG case study on owning your own channel. If you want to see the picture from a brand that has done it, read on there.

If your shop does not qualify, there is still a path

A shop over the sales cap, not yet registered, or selling outside the qualifying categories may not receive this discount. If that is you, I would not treat it as bad news. Reading this announcement also shows that platform fee rates are numbers that can change, not fixed ones, and a shop with its own sales channel does not depend on the platform's rates alone.

What you can do right now, without waiting for anyone, is open your real fee report in the Seller Center and see how much goes out each month. Then compare it with your share of repeat customers. Those two numbers help show whether the fees you pay are going toward new customers the platform brought, or toward customers who already know your shop and are coming back to buy again.

What a ready-to-sell e-commerce website needs

There is not much to prepare before opening a website, and a shop already selling on platforms has plenty of product information in hand. It only needs to be gathered in one place.

Start with a list of your ten to twenty best-selling products, with clear photos and short descriptions written in the language you use with real customers. Next come your prices and shipping rates, already decided, along with a clear return policy. Last is a contact channel that actually gets answered, such as LINE or a phone number someone picks up.

On the system side, as the package page describes, the shopping cart, payment through a payment gateway and automatic order confirmation are the parts our team builds. The back office for managing orders, stock and discount coupons is the tool you will use every day after launch. If you want to know which features you really need and which you would pay for and never use, I put that in the article on building your first e-commerce website.

Use both paths side by side for these six months

I am not suggesting you give up the discount and leave the platforms. The more sensible route is to take the discount you are entitled to, and use these six months of lower marketplace costs to set up your own channel in parallel. When the measure ends on 31 May 2027, a shop that already has regular customers on its own channel will have more options than a shop whose entire sales sit on one platform, whatever the rates are after that.

One more thing to prepare is getting people to find the website. A website that states product information as clear text helps both people and search tools read it more easily. I put what to adjust in the website checklist for AI search 2026.

What the TumWebSME E-Commerce package includes

If your shop has many products and you want a selling system of your own, the E-Commerce package shown on our website as of 29 October 2026 is priced at 199,000 baht, VAT included. What it lists:

• Shopping cart, online payment through a payment gateway and automatic order confirmation

• A back office for managing orders, stock and discount coupons

• Unlimited pages, two languages and responsive design

• Product SEO and AI search support

• Two months of after-sales support, with two SEO articles and a website traffic report for those two months

Full details and examples of real clients are on the TumWebSME website package page. The price and scope in this article were checked against that page on 29 October 2026. If you are not sure what size your shop should start with, tell our team about your shop first.

A 5-step plan for shops already selling on platforms

1. Open the invitation from your platform and check your shop's conditions: registration, sales cap and product category.

2. Open last month's report in the Seller Center and note three numbers: the mandatory fees actually deducted, the advertising or promotion you paid for, and the number of repeat customers.

3. Build a list of regular customers you can contact directly with their consent, such as a LINE chat you already have.

4. Talk to the web team about the scope of a first version. Start with your best sellers and do not wait until every product is ready.

5. Launch the site and tell your regular customers there is another channel, while continuing to sell on your platforms as usual. Before inviting customers to buy outside a platform, read each platform's terms of use to see whether there are rules on this. I have not checked the terms of all three.

How will you know it worked?

I do not have a universal benchmark for what share of sales from the website counts as success, because every shop is different. What you can measure is yourself, month by month: the share of sales from your own channel against total sales, profit per order compared between website orders and platform orders, and the number of repeat customers who come back to buy through the website.

Give it at least one to two months before drawing conclusions, since a new website takes time to become known and for Google to collect data. And once the measure has passed, open the fee report for the first month after 31 May 2027 and compare it with the numbers you noted now. You will see for yourself what the real rates are after the measure ends.

Back to the stall in the night market

A stall that got its rent reduced should stay in the market. The big night market still brings people every day. But a stall that also has its own shopfront elsewhere, with its regular customers' contacts and a product list customers can open any time, will read the market owner's next announcement with a different frame of mind, whether it is good news or not.

If you would like to talk about where your shop should start with its own channel, tell our team what you sell now, which channels you use and which products sell best, and we will think through a first version with you.

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