Singapore: Ministry of Home Affairs assessed Meta and Carousell's verification measures under the Online Criminal Harms Act

On 10 March 2025, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) assessed the enhanced verification measures implemented by Carousell and Meta under the E-Commerce Code of the Online Criminal Harms Act (OCHA) following a six-month pilot programme. The OCHA empowers the competent authorities to require online services to take steps to disrupt fraud and malicious activity. The E-Commerce Act applies to designated online services, specifically Carousell, Facebook Marketplace, Facebook Ads and Facebook Pages, which are considered to pose the highest risk of e-commerce fraud in Singapore. Under the OCHA, these platforms were required to verify selected sellers and advertisers against government-issued records, a measure known as enhanced verification. The initial six-month pilot for Carousell showed an 11% reduction in reported scams, prompting MHA to extend the assessment period by another six months until 30 June 2025. If there is no significant reduction in fraud by then, Carousell may be required to verify all sellers by 1 October 2025. Facebook Marketplace saw a 55% reduction in fraud, so the MHA will not require an enhanced verification system. Conversely, scams from Facebook Advertisements increased by 12%, but MHA acknowledges that Meta plans to verify all advertisers by the end of June 2025 and will monitor further developments. Additionally, MHA has observed a high number of scams on Facebook Pages and is working with Meta to introduce verification requirements for selected pages in 2025, with potential expansion if scam levels do not decrease significantly.