“The company’s registered capital is only 100,000. Can we run Takealot?”

“The company was just registered three months ago. Do I have to wait six months before I can apply?”

“I mainly sell on Temu and Shein. I don’t have an Amazon store—can I still apply to join?”

Every day, sellers ask these questions. And the answers often disappoint them.

On July 1, 2026, Takealot’s Hong Kong merchant onboarding team officially implemented a new set of onboarding policies—three mandatory requirements were tightened simultaneously: a registered capital of no less than 350,000 RMB, a company that has been in operation for at least six months, and a link to a cross-border platform store under the same entity.

A large number of sellers who had originally planned to test the waters in South Africa were shut out.

“I want to start a Takealot—where do I begin?”

This is the question we get asked most often. Every day, sellers ask: What documents are required? What is the process? How long does it take?

In today’s post, I’ll explain everything you need to know about joining Takealot—including the correct steps, required documents, and the complete process—all in one go.

“I submitted the application myself on the official website, waited two months without hearing anything, and when I contacted the service provider, they told me my business license had been locked.”

This isn’t a joke. Takealot’s onboarding process is different from other platforms—it’s not as simple as “apply—review—approve.” If you don’t understand the rules, at best you’ll hear nothing for three months; at worst, your business license will be locked, and you’ll never be able to join the platform again.

Based on our experience working with hundreds of sellers, we’ve identified the five most common pitfalls when setting up a store on Takealot—falling into just one of them could undo all your hard work.

“I submitted my application, waited a few days, and received a rejection letter—‘Your application has been declined.’”

This is not an isolated case. Since 2026, Takealot has significantly tightened its onboarding review process, resulting in a large number of Chinese sellers being rejected after submitting their applications. Some were instantly rejected after submitting their applications through the official website’s self-service portal; others were rejected despite meeting the requirements for registered capital and company age; and still others had their applications returned outright because the entity listed in the store link did not match.

If you find yourself in the same situation, don’t rush to revise your materials and resubmit them—figuring out why your application was rejected is more important than blindly resubmitting it.

Have you ever found yourself in this situation—

When buying goods on 1688, after asking about the price, I always follow up with, “Boss, how many percentage points extra for an invoice?”

Most suppliers gave the same response: “No invoice without a markup; a 10-point markup for a special-purpose invoice.”

You did the math: annual purchases amount to tens of millions, and if you requested receipts for all of them, the extra cost would be several million. “What you save is profit.” So you decided not to ask for receipts.

Under the previous fixed-rate tax system, whether or not you had an invoice didn’t affect your tax payment, so you didn’t think this was a problem.

But right at the start of 2026, your finances told you something that might have kept you up all night:

“The fixed-rate tax assessment has been abolished; starting this year, tax assessments must be based on audited accounts. If you don’t have purchase invoices, not a single cent of your purchase costs can be deducted—it will all be counted as profit.”

When you open the supplier chat window on 1688, you realize that every time you said, “Can you give me a discount if I don’t need an invoice?” it now seems like you were setting yourself up for trouble.