Kuwait's Delivery Law Is Now Enforced: Penalties and What To Do If You're Not Compliant

The grace period is over. Ministerial Decision No. 109 of 2026 took effect on 9 July 2026, and businesses were given until 1 September 2026 to bring existing contracts and commercial licences into line. From that date, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry can act on violations.

Our earlier guide covered what the law requires and who it applies to. This one covers the part that matters now: what enforcement actually looks like, how the Ministry finds out, and what to do if you reach the deadline without being ready.

The penalties are a ladder, not a cliff

This is the single most misunderstood part of the decision, and it is causing more panic than it should.

Article 15 sets out a progressive scale of administrative penalties. Violations identified after 1 September 2026 can result in:

• A warning — the first step in almost every case, requiring the violation to be corrected.
• Temporary closure of the platform — suspension until the violation is fixed, not a permanent measure.
• Cancellation of the commercial licence — reserved for serious cases, with the Ministry able to recommend permanent cancellation.

Read that order carefully. Being found non-compliant on 2 September is not the same as being shut down on 2 September. The severe penalties attach to platforms that are warned and then fail to correct the violation, or to conduct serious enough to skip the ladder.

That distinction should change how you triage. The goal in the next few weeks is not perfection. It is being able to demonstrate that you are correcting course.

Enforcement is complaint-driven

Two bodies oversee this decision: the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Competition Protection Agency. Both can investigate complaints and take enforcement action.

The practical implication is one that news coverage has largely skipped. There is no realistic prospect of an inspector auditing every online store in Kuwait on 2 September. The realistic trigger for enforcement is someone filing a complaint — and the people best positioned to do that are:

• A merchant who believes a platform is overcharging them beyond the caps.
• A merchant being penalised for choosing to deliver their own orders.
• A competitor platform.
• A consumer charged more than 1 KD for delivery.

So the risk is not evenly distributed. If you run a platform and your merchant relationships are strained, your exposure is materially higher than the raw compliance question suggests. If you are a merchant being squeezed, you now have a formal route to escalate that you did not have in June.

The 17% is a total, not a commission line

If you check only one thing in your platform contract this week, check this.

The cap is not 17% commission. It is 17% of order value as a combined ceiling covering commission plus advertising, promotion, premium or paid placement, priority ranking, and the platform's own delivery service — assessed before the delivery fee.

This is where merchants are getting a false sense of security. A contract showing 15% commission looks compliant. Add a 4% promoted-listing package on top and it is not. The individual line items are irrelevant; only the total counts.

If you deliver orders yourself, the ceiling drops to 10%. We worked through when that trade actually pays in a separate breakdown of the commission maths — the short version is that the headline saving is smaller than it looks once you pay a carrier, and the break-even point depends on your average order value.

Two related protections are worth knowing, because they are what the complaint mechanism exists to enforce: a platform cannot compel you to use its delivery service, and it cannot penalise you for delivering independently. Downranking a merchant for self-delivering is precisely the conduct the Competition Protection Agency was given oversight of.

The contract relief valve most coverage missed

Existing agreements had to be brought into conformity by 1 September. But there is an exception that a lot of merchants have not been told about: contracts whose terms already comply with Article 7 may continue to run until they expire.

You do not need to tear up and renegotiate an agreement that was already inside the caps. If your commercial terms were already within 17% (or 10% for self-delivery), and the delivery fee arrangement already put the charge on the consumer at or below 1 KD, that contract can stand.

Check before you renegotiate. Reopening a contract you did not need to reopen is an unforced error.

The licence reclassification

Providers falling within the decision were required to reclassify their commercial register activity to “Management of Delivery Services via Electronic Platforms” — code 532013 — by 1 September.

If this applies to you and you have not done it, this is the item to move on first. It is administrative rather than commercial: there is nothing to negotiate, only a filing to complete. It is also the easiest violation for the Ministry to identify, because it is visible in the register itself rather than buried in a private contract.

First, confirm you are actually in scope

Before doing any of the above, confirm the decision applies to you at all. A meaningful number of merchants are preparing to comply with a law that does not cover them.

Decision 109/2026 regulates intermediary electronic platforms — services that broker orders between a merchant and a consumer and take a commission for doing so. It does not apply to platforms that sell only their own products.

If you run your own online store — on Shopify, Salla, Zid, WooCommerce or Odoo — and you sell your own inventory to your own customers, you are not operating an intermediary platform. You are a merchant. The commission caps govern what platforms may charge you; they do not impose a licensing obligation on your store.

The full scope test is set out in our merchant compliance guide. Where a business genuinely sits on the line — a store that also lists third-party sellers, for instance — that is a question for a Kuwaiti commercial lawyer, not for a checklist.

If you are not compliant today, do these in order

1. Establish scope. Intermediary platform, or own-product seller? Everything else depends on this answer.
2. File the register reclassification if you are in scope and have not done it. Administrative, visible, and quick.
3. Total up your platform charges. Every line — commission, advertising, promoted placement, priority ranking, platform delivery. Compare the total against 17%, or 10% if you self-deliver.
4. Check whether your contract already complied. If it did, leave it alone and let it run to expiry.
5. Confirm the delivery charge. The consumer alone bears it, capped at 1 KD per order.
6. Document what you have fixed and when. Given that the first penalty is a warning requiring correction, a clear record that you began correcting in good faith is worth having.

What this does not change

The decision caps what an intermediary platform may charge a merchant. It does not cap what a logistics provider may charge a business for carrying a parcel — that is a commercial service contract between two businesses, not an intermediary taking a cut of someone else's sale.

This distinction matters if you are reworking your delivery arrangements in response to the caps. Moving from a marketplace's bundled delivery to a dedicated carrier changes the nature of the relationship, and the two are governed differently. Our guide on choosing a delivery partner covers what to look for.

The realistic outlook

Expect the first months of enforcement to be complaint-led and correction-focused rather than punitive. The ladder in Article 15 is designed to bring platforms into compliance, not to close them. The businesses that will have problems are the ones that receive a warning and treat it as noise.

The merchants who benefit most are the ones who understand what the caps entitle them to. If your platform is charging above the ceiling, bundling promotion fees on top of commission, or making self-delivery costly, those practices are now regulated — and there is a body whose job is to hear about it.

This article is general information about Ministerial Decision No. 109 of 2026, not legal advice. Enforcement outcomes depend on specific facts. For a decision about your own licence classification or contracts, consult a Kuwaiti commercial lawyer.

Selling online in Kuwait and rethinking how your orders get delivered? Talk to the Karrix team about connecting your store to a dedicated delivery operation.