Website Terms and Conditions in South Africa: What the Law Requires

The document everyone copies and nobody reads

Website terms and conditions are the most copied document on the internet. A South African business launches a site, searches for a template, finds one written for California or the United Kingdom, changes the company name, and publishes it.

The result is a document that governs nothing. It refers to consumer rights that do not exist here, omits disclosures that South African law requires, and includes exclusions that our Consumer Protection Act treats as void. Worst of all, it usually reads as though it protects the business, which is why nobody looks at it again.

This article covers what South African law actually requires, and what a set of terms can and cannot do for you here.

Three laws decide what goes in your terms

There is no single "website terms" statute. Three separate laws apply, and which ones apply to you depends on what your site does.

• The Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002, usually called the ECT Act or ECTA. If you offer goods or services for sale, hire or exchange electronically, section 43 gives you a mandatory disclosure list. This is the one most sites fail.
• The Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008, the CPA. If you supply goods or services to consumers in the ordinary course of business, it sets minimum rights that your terms cannot remove, and it makes certain clauses void no matter how carefully you word them.
• POPIA, which governs personal information. Your privacy policy carries that load rather than your terms, but the two documents must agree with each other. See how to write a POPIA privacy policy for that side of it.

A brochure site that sells nothing still benefits from terms covering intellectual property, acceptable use and limitation of liability. A site that takes money has statutory obligations on top.

If you sell online, section 43 is a checklist

Section 43(1) of the ECT Act lists eighteen items a supplier must make available to consumers before they transact. It is not guidance. It is a list, lettered (a) to (r), and the useful thing about a statutory list is that you can work through it and know when you are done.

Who you are:

• Your full name and legal status, meaning sole proprietor, close corporation, private company and so on
• Your physical address and telephone number
• Your website address and email address
• Your registration number, the names of your office bearers, and your place of registration, if you are a juristic person
• A physical address where you will accept legal service of documents
• Membership of any self-regulatory or accreditation body, with contact details
• Any code of conduct you subscribe to, and how it can be accessed electronically

What you are selling:

• A sufficient description of the main characteristics of the goods or services, enough for the consumer to make an informed decision
• The full price, including transport costs, taxes and any other fees or costs
• The manner of payment
• The time within which goods will be dispatched or delivered, or services rendered
• Where relevant, the minimum duration of the agreement for anything supplied on an ongoing or recurring basis

The rules of the deal:

• Any terms of the agreement, including guarantees, and how those terms can be accessed, stored and reproduced electronically
• The manner and period within which the consumer can access and keep a full record of the transaction
• Your return, exchange and refund policy
• Any alternative dispute resolution code you subscribe to, and how to access its wording
• Your security procedures and privacy policy covering payment, payment information and personal information
• The consumer's rights under section 44, which is the cooling-off period covered below

Two of these catch people out repeatedly. The full price requirement means a delivery fee revealed only at the last step of checkout is a compliance problem, not a growth tactic. And the requirement to disclose a physical address for legal service is uncomfortable for home-based businesses, but it is not optional.

What it costs you to skip the list

Section 43(3) is the part that gives the list teeth. If you fail to comply with subsection (1) or (2), the consumer may cancel the transaction within 14 days of receiving the goods or services. No reason required, no fault needed on your side beyond the missing information.

On cancellation the consumer returns what they received and you refund what they paid, less the direct cost of returning the goods. In other words, an incomplete terms page converts every sale into a two-week option that the buyer can walk away from.

Section 43(5) adds a separate duty to use a payment system that is sufficiently secure by accepted technological standards, and section 43(6) makes you liable for damage a consumer suffers because you did not. In practice this is an argument for using an established gateway rather than handling card details yourself.

The checkout requirement almost nobody implements

Section 43(2) is one line and it is about your checkout flow rather than your terms document:

The supplier must provide a consumer with an opportunity to review the entire electronic transaction, to correct any mistakes, and to withdraw from the transaction, before finally placing any order.

A one-click checkout that charges the card without an order review screen does not satisfy this. Neither does a flow where the only way back is the browser back button. You need a confirmation step that shows the whole order, allows changes, and lets the customer abandon it.

This matters because a breach of 43(2) triggers the same 14-day cancellation right as a breach of 43(1). It is a design requirement hiding in a statute, which is why so many South African stores miss it.

The seven-day cooling off period, and when it does not apply

Section 44 gives consumers in electronic transactions seven days to cancel without reason and without penalty. The clock runs from the date of receipt for goods, and from the date the agreement was concluded for services. You may charge only the direct cost of returning the goods, and you must refund within 30 days of cancellation.

You cannot contract out of this. A term in your document saying "all sales are final" does not survive contact with section 44.

What many sites get wrong is the opposite error: assuming it always applies. Section 42 excludes a long list of transactions from the cooling-off right, including:

• Financial services, including investment, insurance and banking services
• Goods sold by auction
• Foodstuffs, beverages and other goods intended for everyday consumption
• Services that began, with the consumer's agreement, before the seven days ran out
• Goods whose price depends on financial market fluctuations outside your control
• Goods made to the consumer's specification, clearly personalised, or liable to deteriorate or expire quickly
• Audio or video recordings and computer software that the consumer has unsealed
• Newspapers, periodicals, magazines and books
• Gaming and lottery services
• Accommodation, transport, catering and leisure services booked for a specific date or period

If you sell software, run a booking service, or deliver a service immediately on payment, the exclusions probably apply to you, and your terms should say so explicitly rather than leaving the customer to guess.

One more distinction worth getting right: the ECT Act's seven days is not the same as the Consumer Protection Act's five business day cooling-off right, which applies to goods sold through direct marketing. They come from different statutes and cover different situations, and articles that conflate them are common.

Terms the CPA makes void no matter what you write

This is where copied international templates cause real harm, because they promise protection our law does not allow.

Section 48 prohibits terms that are unfair, unreasonable or unjust, and a court may sever or rewrite them. Section 51 lists terms that are simply void, including any that purport to waive a consumer's rights under the Act or to avoid a supplier's obligations under it. A blanket "we accept no liability for anything" clause falls straight into this.

Section 49 is the one people have never heard of. If a term limits your risk or liability, assumes a risk on the consumer's behalf, imposes an obligation to indemnify you, or is an acknowledgement of fact by the consumer, then it must be:

• Written in plain language, and
• drawn to the consumer's attention in a conspicuous manner, before they enter the transaction, with an opportunity to receive and comprehend it

Burying an indemnity in clause 14.3 of a page nobody opened does not meet this test. If a clause genuinely matters to you, it needs to be visible at the point of agreement, not merely present somewhere on the site.

Sections 55 and 56 give consumers an implied warranty that goods are of good quality and fit for purpose, with six months to return defective goods for repair, replacement or refund at the consumer's choice. Your terms cannot shorten that window.

Section 22 requires plain and understandable language throughout, judged by whether an ordinary consumer of that class could reasonably be expected to understand it. Dense legal boilerplate is not just unhelpful here, it is a compliance risk.

What actually belongs in a set of website terms

Working from the requirements above, a usable set of South African website terms covers:

• Identity and contact details, including the section 43 items and an address for legal service
• What the site does and what the customer is buying
• Pricing, stated as the full price including VAT, delivery and any other charges
• How an order is accepted, and the point at which a contract is formed
• Payment terms and the gateway used
• Delivery timeframes, and what happens when they slip
• Returns, refunds and cancellation, covering both the section 44 cooling-off right and the CPA quality rights, and stating any applicable exclusions
• Intellectual property in your content, and what visitors may do with it
• Acceptable use, if users can post, upload or comment
• Limitation of liability, drafted to survive sections 48 to 51 rather than to sound impressive
• Governing law and jurisdiction
• How the terms may change, and how customers are told
• A link to your privacy policy and cookie policy

If you sell to consumers you will also want a separate returns or refund policy, since section 43(1) requires it to be available and pointing at a clause buried in your terms is a weak way to satisfy that.

Governing law, jurisdiction, and the clauses that do work

South African businesses should specify South African law and South African courts. A template naming the courts of England or Delaware is not merely inappropriate, it invites an argument you do not want to have.

Note also that consumer protection here is territorial in effect. Where the CPA applies, choosing a foreign governing law does not let you escape it, and the ECT Act's Chapter VII protections apply to electronic transactions with South African consumers. Choice of law is a useful clause between businesses. It is much weaker against a consumer.

The clauses that do reliably work are the ordinary ones: describing your service accurately, defining when a contract forms, setting out payment and delivery, protecting your intellectual property, and limiting liability within what the CPA permits. Terms are far more valuable as a clear description of the deal than as a shield.

Common mistakes in South African website terms

• Using a United States template. References to the DMCA, state law, arbitration in a named US county, or "as is" disclaimers written against the Uniform Commercial Code do nothing here and signal that nobody checked.
• Excluding all liability. Void under section 51, and it undermines the clauses around it.
• Hiding the delivery fee until checkout. A section 43(1) full price problem.
• No order review step. A section 43(2) problem, and a 14-day cancellation risk.
• Saying all sales are final. Unenforceable against the section 44 cooling-off right where it applies.
• No physical address. Required, and its absence is the single quickest way for anyone to tell your terms were copied.
• Terms that contradict the privacy policy, usually because the two were taken from different sources.
• Never updating them. Terms describing a service you stopped offering two years ago are evidence of inattention.

A short checklist

• Do your terms name your legal entity, registration number and a physical address for service?
• Is the full price, including delivery and VAT, visible before the customer commits?
• Does your checkout let the customer review, correct and withdraw before paying?
• Do you state the seven-day cooling-off right, or explain clearly why an exclusion applies?
• Is your returns and refund policy available as its own document?
• Are your liability and indemnity clauses in plain language and drawn to the customer's attention?
• Do your terms name South African law and South African courts?
• Do your terms and your privacy policy agree with each other?

If you are working through your wider obligations as well, the POPIA requirements list covers the data side, and POPIA for online stores deals with checkout data, abandoned carts and marketing lists.

POPIA Ready generates terms of service, a refund policy, a privacy policy and four other documents customised to your business and drafted for South African law, free to preview. The free checklist will show you what else your site is missing.

General guidance on South African law as at August 2026, not legal advice. The ECT Act and the Consumer Protection Act both apply differently depending on what you sell and to whom, and a specific situation deserves a professional opinion.