Discount and Price Claim Rules (Malaysia)

The short version

A discount ad in Malaysia is judged against two rulebooks at once, and most marketers have only ever been shown one of them.

The first is the Content Code 2022, Part 3, paragraph 4.10 ("Prices"). It requires that an advertised discount be an actual discount, that "up to" and "from" claims not exaggerate availability, and that prices be shown as all-in final prices. It is a registered voluntary industry code, so its own enforcement is a Content Forum complaint with a fine ceiling of RM50,000, plus the possibility of an MCMC direction behind it.

The second is statute, and it is the one with teeth. The Trade Descriptions Act 2011 makes a false or misleading statement in an advertisement an offence, deems the advertised brand to have made it unless the contrary is proved, and exposes a company to a fine of up to RM500,000. Underneath the Act sits the Trade Descriptions (Cheap Sale Price) Regulations 1997, substantially rewritten by P.U. (A) 327/2019 with effect from 2 January 2020. That instrument, not the Content Code, is where the real mechanics of a Malaysian sale live: a written notice for any sale longer than three days, a thirty one day cap on holding one price, a duty to state the sale duration in the advertisement itself, and a definition of the reference price that is far simpler than most people assume.

Here is the headline finding, because it changes how you plan a promotional calendar. Malaysia has no minimum period for which a "was" price must have been charged. The twenty eight day rule that circulates in briefing decks is imported from British practice. It is not Malaysian law, and it has not been the Malaysian position at any point since January 2020.

Two rulebooks, one ad

Before going provision by provision, it helps to see which instrument answers which question.

Notice how much of the operational detail lives in the regulations rather than in the Code. Most compliance briefings have that the other way round.

Layer one: what the Content Code says about prices

Paragraph 4.10 of Part 3 is headed "Prices" and runs from (a) to (k). Four sub-paragraphs do the work for discount advertising.

4.10(h), actual discounts. The verbatim text: "When a product is being advertised, or promoted as to be sold at a discount (or similar description such as a bargain), it shall be an actual discount i.e. price is lower than normal for a specific time period and shall comply with any relevant guidelines issued by the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs." Two things are packed into that sentence. First, a definition of a genuine discount that is refreshingly plain: lower than normal, for a specific time period. Second, a cross-reference that goes nowhere useful, which we come to below.

4.10(c), "up to" and "from". The text is short: "Price claims such as 'up to' and 'from' shall not exaggerate the availability of benefits likely to be obtained by Consumers." No percentage floor, no minimum stock ratio, no safe harbour. It is a standard judged on consumer impression. If the same creative also carries a "lowest price in Malaysia" style line, that has left paragraph 4.10 and landed in 4.8, where the superlative claim rules apply.

4.10(d), all-in prices. "Prices shall be shown as all-in or final prices so as not to leave the Consumer guessing as to the final price payable for the product or service."

4.10(i), taxes and non-optional charges. "All quoted prices in Advertisements shall include non-optional taxes, duties, fees and charges that apply to all or most buyers including taxes in accordance with published laws."

One drafting detail is worth internalising, because it changes how strictly you should read the Code overall. The Code distinguishes deliberately between "shall" and "should", and every one of the four price sub-paragraphs above is drafted in "shall". Contrast the substantiation paragraph next door at 4.8, which says descriptions and claims "should be capable of substantiation". The Content Forum's own November 2025 consultation report records respondents complaining that "should" reads as optional and weakens compliance, so the softness elsewhere is a documented live issue rather than an accident of style.

The cross-reference in 4.10(h) that leads nowhere

Paragraph 4.10(h) tells you to comply with "any relevant guidelines issued by the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs". It names no instrument. It gives no date. And the ministry it names has since been renamed the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Cost of Living, KPDN. That obsolete name survives verbatim into the 2025 draft revision of the Code, so the review is not fixing it.

KPDN's own published index does list guidelines that look like candidates, including one on avoiding false or misleading advertisements and one on price marking by retail sellers. We could not retrieve the text of either, so their issue dates, legal basis and current status are unconfirmed, and neither can honestly be identified as the guideline paragraph 4.10(h) means. Do not let a compliance deck tell you otherwise.

The practical consequence is straightforward. The binding, dated Malaysian instruments that actually govern discount pricing are the Cheap Sale Price Regulations as amended in 2019 and sections 14, 15 and 18 of the Trade Descriptions Act 2011. Those are regulations and primary legislation, not "guidelines", and 4.10(h) does not cite them. If you comply with the statutory layer, you have done considerably more than 4.10(h) asks.

Layer two: the cheap sale price regime, which is real law

This is the layer that rarely reaches a marketing brief, and it is where a Malaysian promotional calendar is actually constrained.

The instrument is the Trade Descriptions (Cheap Sale Price) Regulations 1997 P.U. (A) 424/1997. It was originally made under the old Trade Description Act 1972 and continued in force by section 71(b) of the Trade Descriptions Act 2011, which provides that regulations made under the repealed Act "shall remain in force and shall continue to remain in force as if every such appointment, order, rule and regulation were issued or made under and by virtue of this Act until replaced or revoked". It was then substantially amended by the Trade Descriptions (Cheap Sale Price) (Amendment) Regulations 2019 P.U. (A) 327, made under section 69 of the 2011 Act, gazetted on 29 November 2019 and in operation from 2 January 2020. A title-filtered search of the Attorney General's Chambers subsidiary legislation database returns no cheap sale instrument after 2019, so the 2020 position is still the current one.

One honest caveat before the detail. The principal 1997 regulations could not be retrieved from any public route we tried. Everything below is read out of the 2019 amending gazette, which reproduces every operative provision this guide relies on. Where a provision's unamended opening words matter, we say so.

The notice requirement

Regulation 3(1), as substituted in 2019, is the gateway. No person shall, in the course of trade or business, supply or offer to supply goods at cheap sale price for a cheap sale of more than three days unless a written notice as determined by the Controller is served on the Controller, Deputy Controller or Assistant Controller of Trade Descriptions not later than one day immediately prior to the date of commencement.

Two thresholds, both easy to remember. More than three days triggers the notice. One day is the minimum lead time. A weekend flash sale of three days or fewer sits outside the requirement entirely.

The thirty one day cap, and the only way past it

Regulation 6(1) previously spoke of "thirty days or any such duration as the Controller may fix". The 2019 amendment substituted "thirty one days". That cap attaches to holding a given cheap sale price, not to the calendar length of your promotional season.

Regulation 6(1A), inserted in 2019, sets out the extension route. Where the offer is to be extended beyond thirty one days, notice under regulation 3 must be served, and the goods must be offered at a cheap sale price lower than the cheap sale price previously offered. KPDN's guidance renders the same rule in Malay: an extension is permitted "dengan syarat tawaran diskaun perlu lebih tinggi dari tawaran diskaun yang sebelumnya", that is, on condition the discount offered is deeper than the previous one.

Think about what that does to a common ecommerce habit. The permanent 50% off banner, refreshed with a new end date every month, is precisely the pattern regulation 6(1A) closes. You may keep discounting past thirty one days, but each continuation has to go deeper and has to be re-notified. That is a planning constraint, and it should shape how you sequence a season rather than being discovered halfway through it. If you plan around the Malaysian sale calendar, the mega sale playbook is the operational companion to this legal one.

The reference price, and the myth attached to it

Regulation 8(3), substituted with effect from 2 January 2020, defines "the price at which the goods were previously supplied or offered to be supplied by him" as "the latest price, other than the current price during the cheap sale period, of the goods or goods of the same description supplied or offered to be supplied by him in the course of trade or business before the date of commencement of the supply or offer to supply the goods at cheap sale price".

Read it twice, because what is absent matters more than what is present. There is no duration qualifier: no minimum number of days, no look-back window, no continuous period at all. The reference price is the latest price you actually charged before the sale started. KPDN's cheap sale portal states the same in its own words: the base price is determined by the last (most recent) normal price the trader offered before the sale start date.

Malaysia did once have something harder. Both the regulator's own before-and-after table and the only English rendering we could find agree in shape: before 2 January 2020 the reference price rested on a lowest-price-over-a-continuous-period test anchored to a look-back window, rather than on the latest price charged. They do not agree on the parameters of that window, the principal 1997 text is unretrievable, and the discrepancy cannot be resolved, so we publish no numbers for the old test at all. The shape is all you need, because the 2019 amendment substituted regulation 8(3) outright and no version of the older test survives.

What does survive, and what trips people up, is that two numeric limits remain in the regime: the thirty one day cap on one offer and the three day notice threshold. Neither of them is a reference-price rule. If a colleague tells you the "was" price must have run for a set number of days, they have almost certainly imported a British rule or mangled one of these two.

The burden of proof sits on you

Regulation 8(5), inserted in 2019, is short and consequential: "In a prosecution under this regulation, the onus of proving that the latest price, not including the current price during the duration of a cheap sale price, of the goods or goods of the same description is supplied or offered to be supplied by him in the course of trade or business, shall lie on the person charged."

So the absence of a minimum duration is not a licence to invent a "was" price. It relocates the work. Nobody has to prove your reference price was fake. You have to prove it was real. In practice that means dated evidence that the price was genuinely charged or offered: a product-page screenshot with a timestamp, an order export, a price-change log from your ecommerce platform. Save it at the moment the price changes, not when a letter arrives.

Regulation 13(2), substituted in 2019, adds a dedicated offence: "No person shall make any false or misleading statement in any cheap sale price advertisement in relation to any goods." Regulation 13(2A) puts the onus of proving the statement is true or not misleading on the person charged. Note the limit, which is easy to miss: 13(2) reaches goods only, not services.

What has to appear on the creative

The 2019 amendment inserted into regulation 13(1), after the word "shall", the words "specify in the advertisement the duration of the sale", and deleted the former paragraphs (a) and (b). Two changes in one stroke. A duty went in: the sale duration goes on the advertisement. And two duties came out: the previous requirements to display the notice registration number and the KPDN logo in the advertisement were removed.

That second half is why old compliance checklists mislead. If yours still tells you to put a registration number and a ministry logo on the creative, it predates January 2020.

One caveat on scope. The unamended opening words of regulation 13(1), which fix exactly whom the duty binds, could not be retrieved. The inserted words are unambiguous in effect, but "every cheap sale advertisement" is an inference about reach rather than a quotation. The conservative and simple response is to put the sale dates on the creative, which costs nothing and is good practice anyway.

On penalties, an honest gap

We are not publishing a penalty figure for a cheap sale breach. The relevant regulation-level amounts sit in provisions of the principal 1997 regulations that no public source we tried would serve, and a confident wrong number here would be worse than no number.

What is verifiable is the outer ceiling. Section 69(2)(g) of the Trade Descriptions Act 2011 empowers regulations made under the Act to prescribe "a penalty of a fine not exceeding two hundred and fifty thousand ringgit or imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years" for contravention. That is the statutory maximum any such regulation may reach, not necessarily the figure in the cheap sale regulations themselves. Treat it as the shape of the exposure, and get the actual provision read by a lawyer if you need the precise number.

The Trade Descriptions Act offences that sit above everything

Even if the cheap sale regime somehow did not reach you, the Act itself does.

Section 14(1) prohibits a person who offers to supply goods from making any false or misleading indication, by any means, direct or indirect, "that the price at which the goods are offered is equal to or less than the recommended price", "that the goods are being offered at a price less than that at which they are in fact being offered", or "that the goods are being offered at a price less than being offered by any other person". That middle limb is the was/now provision in everything but name.

Two things sharpen it. Section 14(3)(a) provides that an indication as to a "recommended price" is treated, unless the contrary is expressed, as a price recommended by the manufacturer or producer and recommended generally for retail supply in the area where the goods are offered. So an RRP you invented for the strike-through is not a recommended price. And section 14(3)(c) provides that "any person advertising goods as available for supply shall be taken as offering to supply them", which is the step that pulls a paid social ad into the section 14 price-indication offence. That last inference is ours rather than statutory language, but it is a short step, and section 14 opens with "A person who offers to supply any goods", so keep the goods-only limit in view. For services, sections 17 and 18 are the relevant provisions.

One correction worth making explicitly, because it circulates wrongly. Section 14(2) does not reverse the burden of proof on the section 14 offence generally. It places a targeted onus on the person charged to prove either that his price is genuinely lower than another supplier's, or the existence and terms of a recommended price relied on and compliance with section 14(3). The general reversal lives elsewhere, in section 18(2).

Section 18(1): "No person shall make any false or misleading statement in any advertisement in relation to any goods or services." Section 18(2): "Where any person is charged with an offence under this section, the onus of proving that the statement made by him is true or not misleading shall be upon the person charged." Note that section 18 covers services as well as goods, which is how a spa package or a course fee gets caught.

Section 19 deems two categories of person to have given the false or misleading statement unless the contrary is proved: the person who directly or indirectly offers to supply the goods or services, and the person on whose behalf the advertisement is made. The brand, in other words, not just the agency that built the creative or the platform that served it.

Section 21 sets the exposure for contravening Part III, which contains section 18. A body corporate faces a fine of up to RM500,000, rising to up to RM1,000,000 for a second or subsequent offence. A person who is not a body corporate faces a fine of up to RM250,000 or up to three years' imprisonment or both, rising to RM500,000 or five years. Read "not a body corporate" carefully: it catches partnerships and sole proprietorships, not only individuals.

All-in pricing: the statute is stronger than the code

Section 15(1) of the Trade Descriptions Act 2011 is the provision to know: "Where in any advertisement the price of any goods or services is quoted, such price shall, unless the contrary appears, be deemed to include all eligible government taxes and duties and any other charges."

That is a deeming provision, which is a different and stronger thing than a disclosure duty. Silence does not leave the question open. Silence means the quoted price is treated as including everything. A RM99 headline followed by a checkout that adds service tax on top is a mismatch between what the law says you promised and what you charged. Section 15(2) disapplies section 15 to advertisements made in the course of a prescribed trade or business under section 10B of the Price Control and Anti-Profiteering Act 2011, a narrow carve-out rather than a general exemption. If you are working out how tax lands on your own ad spend rather than on your prices, that is a separate question covered in the SST on Meta ads guide.

The Content Code covers the same ground twice, at 4.10(d) and 4.10(i), and neither is drafted as strongly as section 15(1). The 2025 draft revision proposes exactly one change to paragraph 4.10, and it lands on (d). The draft adds this sentence: "However, where certain charges cannot be reasonably calculated in advance, this must be clearly stated alongside the advertised price, together with an explanation of how such charges will be calculated." A full comparison of 4.10(a) to (k) confirms nothing else in the paragraph changes, and 4.10(h) is word for word identical in the draft, obsolete ministry name and all.

Treat that addition as a clarification rather than a new duty. The in-force 4.10(i) already carries a similar carve-out for taxes that cannot be calculated in advance. And treat the draft as a draft: as at 28 July 2026 no revised Content Code had been registered. MCMC's Register Of Current Voluntary Industry Codes still shows the Content Code (Third Edition) of 30 May 2022 as the most recent content code, while carrying a sub-code registered in May 2026, so the register is demonstrably current. The Content Forum stated in its November 2025 consultation report that after working group agreement and a final legal and technical review, the finalised Content Code will be submitted to MCMC for registration. Re-check the register before you rely on any paragraph number in this guide.

The open question: does this reach a purely online seller?

We flag this as unresolved rather than resolving it for you, because the honest answer is that nobody we could find has resolved it in public.

The case for application is decent. The duties are framed around supplying or offering to supply goods in the course of trade or business, which describes an online store as accurately as a shoplot. Section 14(3)(c) of the Act treats advertising goods as available for supply as an offer to supply them. Nothing in the operative provisions the 2019 amendments substituted carves out ecommerce.

The case for doubt is narrower but real. No primary source we retrieved says expressly that the cheap sale regime binds a seller with no physical premises. The unamended opening words of regulations 6(1) and 13(1), which fix whom each duty binds, are precisely where a premises-based scope limit would sit, and those words remain unread.

The working position we would take: assume it applies. Notifying a sale longer than three days and putting the sale dates on the creative are both cheap. Discovering after a KPDN enquiry that you should have been doing both for two years is not.

Worked example: one sale, checked line by line

Take a Malaysian skincare brand planning a mid-year promotion. The plan on the whiteboard reads: six weeks, storewide, "UP TO 60% OFF", struck-through prices from the original launch RRP, "from RM39" on the hero SKU, prices shown excluding shipping.

Run it against the rules.

Rebuilt, the plan reads: two consecutive offers, thirty days at 40% then twelve days at 50%, both notified, "40% OFF SITEWIDE, 1 to 30 JUNE" on the creative, was-prices pulled from the live price list as at 31 May with a dated export saved, "from RM39" reserved for a shade genuinely stocked at RM39, and prices quoted inclusive. Nothing in that rebuild weakens the offer. It just makes every number on the creative defensible.

The same discipline applies to any claim you attach to the price. If the ad also shows results, the before-and-after rules add a separate layer on top of the pricing one.

Building a discount ad that survives a complaint

A short pre-flight list, in the order the questions actually arise.

Confirm the reference price is the latest price you charged, and export dated evidence of it before the sale price goes live. Decide the sale length, and if it exceeds three days, serve the notice at least one day ahead. Keep each offer within thirty one days, and plan any extension as a deeper discount with fresh notice rather than a date change. Put the sale duration on the creative itself. Quote all-in prices, and if a charge genuinely cannot be calculated in advance, say so beside the price and explain how it will be calculated: that is the sentence the 2025 draft would add to 4.10(d), it is not yet in force, and doing it now costs nothing. Check every "up to" and "from" against real SKU counts, and keep the count. Skip the notice registration number and the ministry logo, which stopped being required in January 2020.

Then keep the file. Under the Content Code route you have five working days from the Complaints Bureau's request to produce documentary evidence supporting a comparative, superlative or misleading claim, with the Bureau ruling within ten working days of receiving it, and those limits extendable at the Bureau's discretion where strict application would cause injustice. What that evidence file has to contain is the subject of the claim substantiation rules. Under the statutory route, section 18(2) and regulations 8(5) and 13(2A) all place the burden on you. Five working days is comfortable if the evidence was filed when the price changed. It is not comfortable if you are reconstructing a price history from memory.

One last framing point. Compliance here is not purely defensive. Section 98(2) of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 provides that compliance with a registered voluntary industry code is a defence against any prosecution, action or proceeding regarding a matter dealt with in that code. Following paragraph 4.10 is an asset you can point at, and the statutory layer beneath it is the part that decides whether the discount on your creative was ever real.