A woman watching a TikTok livestream offering merchandise for sale in Jakarta. - AFP
JAKARTA (Bloomberg): TikTok will suspend its online-retail operation in Indonesia from Wednesday (Oct 4) to comply with curbs on social commerce, a big setback for the Chinese-owned startup in one of its fastest-growing markets.
The company will stop facilitating e-commerce transactions on TikTok Shop Indonesia from 5pm Jakarta time on Oct 4, it said in a statement Tuesday. The company said that its priority is to remain compliant with laws and regulations and that it will coordinate with the Indonesian government for its next steps.
Indonesia last week announced sweeping regulations that will force ByteDance Ltd’s TikTok to split its shopping feature from the popular video-scrolling service in the country, an unprecedented separation that could stall TikTok’s e-commerce thrust just as it was gaining traction against Sea Ltd. and GoTo Group.
