By business type

Cookie Policy Generator for marketplaces

Written for two-sided platforms: joint controllership, seller data, DSA duties and payouts.

Generate your cookie policy Read the cookie policy guide

On a marketplace the cookie question is complicated by sellers: seller-supplied content, storefront customisation and affiliate links can each introduce tracking you did not install but are answerable for as the platform operator.

Marketplaces have a role problem that single-sided businesses do not. For your own account and platform data you are a controller. For data flowing between buyer and seller you may be a joint controller, a processor, or an independent controller depending on the specific flow - and Article 26 requires joint controllers to have an arrangement and to make its essence available to individuals.

The Digital Services Act added a substantial layer for marketplaces serving the EU: trader traceability, notice-and-action, statements of reasons for removals, internal complaint handling, and a ban on dark patterns in interface design. These are platform obligations, not seller obligations, and they cannot be delegated.

Payouts introduce a third dimension. Splitting payments between platform and seller usually means identity verification on sellers, tax reporting obligations, and a payments partner who becomes a significant party in the data chain.

What a cookie policy for an online marketplace has to cover

Platform cookies for session, cart and search personalisation
Trackers introduced through seller storefronts, listings or supplied content
Affiliate and referral cookies attributing traffic between parties
Advertising products sold to sellers, and the data they collect about buyers
How consent is enforced across pages you control and pages sellers customise

How an online marketplace actually moves personal data

Buyer data shared with sellers

Name, delivery address and order contents passed to a seller who then becomes a controller in their own right for fulfilment.

Seller onboarding and verification

Identity documents, bank details and tax identifiers collected for verification and reporting.

Messaging between users

On-platform messages are personal data you host, with moderation, retention and disclosure questions attached.

Reviews and ratings

Published personal data about identifiable sellers and buyers, with rights to object and correct.

Payouts and tax reporting

Seller earnings data reported to tax authorities under marketplace reporting rules.

Moderation and enforcement records

Evidence of removals and suspensions, retained to support the statements of reasons the DSA requires.

Third parties the draft will ask you about

Stripe Connect or Adyen for Platforms · identity verification vendors · AWS or Google Cloud · Zendesk · trust and safety tooling · tax reporting providers

The rules that apply

GDPR Article 26 joint controllership

Where you and sellers jointly determine purposes and means, you need an arrangement and must make its essence available to data subjects.

Digital Services Act

Trader traceability, notice-and-action, statements of reasons, internal complaints, and interface design rules for marketplaces serving the EU.

Seller identity and tax reporting

Marketplace reporting rules require collection and reporting of seller identity and income data in many jurisdictions.

Consumer law allocation

Who the consumer contracts with - platform or seller - determines who owes cancellation rights and remedies.

Payments and KYC on sellers

Split payments usually trigger identity verification duties through the payments partner.

What the generated cookie policy contains

What the technologies actually are
Cookies, local storage, session storage, pixels, SDKs and server-side tags - the law covers storage and access on a device, not the word "cookie".
A per-cookie table
Name, provider, purpose, category and duration for each cookie, which is the format UK and EU regulators expect to see.
Category definitions
Strictly necessary, functional, analytics and advertising, with an honest explanation of why only the first runs without consent.
How consent was obtained and how to change it
The banner, the granular choices, and a permanent link to reopen preferences - the withdrawal route has to be as easy as the acceptance route.
Third-party cookies and onward use
Which providers set cookies through your site and what they do with the data once it is theirs.
Browser and device controls
Practical instructions, plus a note that blocking strictly necessary cookies will break parts of the service.

The marketplace document set

Map each data flow to a role
Controller, joint controller or processor - per flow, not per relationship.
Put an Article 26 arrangement in the seller terms
And publish its essence where buyers can find it.
Build DSA notice-and-action
Reporting route, statements of reasons, internal complaints, and record-keeping.
Separate buyer terms from seller terms
Two audiences, two sets of obligations, two documents.
Minimise what sellers receive
And say what they receive in the buyer-facing policy.
Document the payouts and reporting chain
Including the payments partner’s own role and the tax reporting obligation.

Where this usually goes wrong

No Article 26 arrangement with sellers

Where joint controllership genuinely exists, the arrangement is mandatory and its essence has to be available to users.

Treating sellers as processors when they are controllers

A seller fulfilling an order decides its own purposes. Calling them a processor misdescribes the relationship and the contract.

Missing DSA notice-and-action machinery

It is a platform obligation with its own procedural requirements, including statements of reasons and internal appeals.

Dark patterns in the interface

Explicitly prohibited by the DSA for marketplaces, and separately actionable under consumer law.

Buyer data over-shared with sellers

Sellers need what fulfilment requires, not the full customer record.

Unclear contracting party

If a consumer cannot tell whether they contracted with you or a seller, the cancellation and remedy obligations land on you.

Frequently asked questions

Is a marketplace a controller or a processor?

Usually a controller for platform data and, for some flows, a joint controller with sellers. Sellers are typically independent controllers for fulfilment. The right answer is per data flow rather than per relationship.

What does the DSA require of marketplaces?

Trader traceability, a notice-and-action mechanism, statements of reasons for moderation decisions, an internal complaint-handling system, and interface design free of dark patterns.

Do I need separate terms for buyers and sellers?

Yes. They have different obligations, different rights and different commercial terms, and merging them produces a document that is unclear to both.

How much buyer data should sellers receive?

What fulfilment requires and no more. Over-sharing is a minimisation failure and increases your exposure when a seller mishandles it.

Do I need a cookie policy as well as a privacy policy?

In the UK and EU, yes in practice. PECR and the ePrivacy Directive regulate storing and reading information on a device separately from GDPR’s rules on processing, and the per-cookie disclosure is too detailed to bury in a privacy policy.

Do analytics cookies need consent?

In the UK and EU, yes - the ICO has said repeatedly that analytics is not "strictly necessary". Some EU regulators allow a narrow exemption for first-party, non-shared audience measurement, but the default answer is consent first.

Does a cookie policy need updating when I add a tool?

Yes, and this is the clause that goes stale fastest. Every new tag, pixel or embedded widget adds cookies your table does not list. Scanning your own site on a schedule is the only reliable way to keep it honest.

What about cookies set by embedded video and maps?

They count. An embedded YouTube player or Google Map sets third-party cookies as soon as it loads, so either it loads only after consent, or you use a privacy-preserving embed mode and say so.