Frequently Asked Questions

SafeCart is a product safety monitoring and GPSR compliance platform for businesses that sell physical goods in the EU. It continuously checks your products against the EU Safety Gate database and alerts you the moment one of them is flagged, so you can act before it becomes a legal or reputational problem.

Alongside monitoring, SafeCart helps you keep the documentation the GPSR expects — including product safety passports — in one place.

The EU General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) requires sellers to keep their products safe, monitor for safety issues, and be ready to act on recalls. SafeCart supports this by:

• Automatically monitoring your catalogue against the EU Safety Gate
• Alerting you when a matching safety notification or recall appears
• Helping you create and host product safety passports
• Keeping a record of safety checks you can show to authorities

SafeCart is a tool to support your compliance — it does not replace your own legal responsibility for product safety.

Most merchants are up and running in a few minutes. Create an account, add a few products (by name and barcode/GTIN, or by importing a CSV), and SafeCart begins monitoring them against the EU Safety Gate right away.

If you use WooCommerce, you can connect your store and import your existing products automatically.

No. SafeCart is designed for business owners, not developers. Adding products, importing a CSV, and connecting a WooCommerce store are all done through a simple dashboard — no coding required.

They serve different audiences:

• The Chrome extension is a free tool for shoppers. It checks products on supported shopping sites against the EU Safety Gate and warns consumers about recalled items.
• The business platform (this dashboard) is for sellers. It monitors your own product catalogue, sends you alerts, and helps you manage GPSR compliance.

You can use either or both.

You can add products in three ways:

1. Manually — enter a product name and its barcode/GTIN in the dashboard.
2. CSV import — upload a spreadsheet to add many products at once.
3. WooCommerce sync — connect your store and import products automatically.

Once added, products are monitored against the EU Safety Gate automatically.

Yes. SafeCart supports CSV import so you can add your entire catalogue at once. Download the template, fill in your product names and barcodes/GTINs, and upload it. WooCommerce users can also import products directly by connecting their store.

At a minimum, a product name and a barcode or GTIN. That is enough for SafeCart to start monitoring the product against the EU Safety Gate. You can add further details — such as manufacturer information — to build a more complete Product Safety Passport.

SafeCart ingests new EU Safety Gate notifications from the official European Commission SGIG API roughly every 15 minutes, and re-checks your whole catalogue against the full notification set every hour. When a product matches it is flagged in your dashboard and included in your daily alert email — so you find out about a relevant alert without having to look for it yourself. Every recall-search API response also includes a meta.last_synced_at timestamp so you can verify data freshness for yourself.

When SafeCart detects a match, it:

• Flags the product in your dashboard
• Sends you an email notification (based on your alert preferences)
• Gives you the details of the Safety Gate notification so you can decide how to respond

You stay in control of what action to take, such as delisting the product or starting a recall.

The EU Safety Gate (formerly RAPEX) is the European Union's rapid alert system for dangerous non-food consumer products. National authorities use it to share information about products that pose a risk, including recalls and withdrawals. SafeCart monitors this database on your behalf.

No scraping. SafeCart is a registered stakeholder system connected directly to the Safety Gate Interoperability Gateway (SGIG) — the European Commission's official machine-to-machine API for the EU Safety Gate, operated by DG Justice and Consumers. We ingest notifications from the source with our own credentials, roughly every 15 minutes and including withdrawn-notification updates, rather than reading the public Safety Gate website.

The primary key is the barcode: every GTIN/EAN/UPC — yours and the notification's — is normalised and GS1 check-digit validated, then matched in canonical GTIN-14 form, so UPC-A, EAN-13 and GTIN-14 encodings of the same product all match.

Because many Safety Gate notifications carry no barcode, continuous monitoring adds a deliberately conservative second tier: a brand-gated, name-similarity match that never auto-flags. It enters a review queue as a possible match for you to confirm or dismiss, dismissals are remembered, and every decision is recorded as GPSR evidence of monitoring.

The full methodology, including current limitations, is published at /docs/how-matching-works.

SafeCart focuses on non-food consumer products covered by the EU Safety Gate — for example toys, electronics, clothing, cosmetics, and household goods. It does not cover food, feed, pharmaceuticals, or medical devices.

Yes, in two ways. The quickest is a one-click connection with nothing to install: enter your store URL, approve read-only API access in your own WooCommerce admin, and your catalogue is imported and checked against the EU Safety Gate every day. The optional SafeCart for WooCommerce plugin adds recall actions inside your store — a kill switch that stops sales of a recalled product, storefront recall warnings, and GPSR safety information on product pages.

Sign in to SafeCart, open Connect store, enter your store URL and choose the one-click WooCommerce connection. WooCommerce sends you to your own store admin to approve read-only API access, then returns you to SafeCart, where your products are imported and monitoring starts. No plugin is needed for this. SafeCart receives WooCommerce API keys rather than your store password, and you can revoke them from WooCommerce at any time. If you later want recall actions inside your store, install the SafeCart for WooCommerce plugin — it connects the same store.

No. SafeCart reads your product information to monitor it — it does not change your storefront, checkout, or customer experience. Monitoring runs in the background on our platform, not on your live site.

WooCommerce is our first native integration. You can use SafeCart with any store today via manual entry or CSV import. Support for additional platforms is on our roadmap — let us know what you use at [email protected].

If a product you sell is recalled, you generally need to stop selling it, inform affected customers where required, and cooperate with authorities. SafeCart alerts you to the recall and gives you the underlying Safety Gate details so you can act quickly and keep a record of your response.

Yes. Beyond alerting you, SafeCart helps you organise your response — flagging affected products and giving you a recall notice template you can adapt to communicate with customers and authorities.

Yes. SafeCart includes an EU product recall notice template that you can customise. It helps you communicate clearly and consistently with customers and market surveillance authorities when a recall happens.

A Product Safety Passport is SafeCart's name for a structured record of a product's key safety and traceability information — such as its name, barcode/GTIN, manufacturer contact details, and any warnings. It is not a passport under the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). SafeCart lets you create and host these records, which can be linked from a QR code so consumers and authorities can access them easily.

Yes. SafeCart can produce QR codes that link to a product's hosted Product Safety Passport page, along with GPSR-aligned product-label templates — making it easy to put traceable safety information on your packaging.

SafeCart offers two simple plans with the same complete feature set: Free for up to 100 products, and Pro at €29/month for up to 1,000 products plus priority email support.

Yes. The Free plan includes all product-safety and compliance features for up to 100 monitored products. Upgrade to Pro only when you need capacity for up to 1,000 products.

Paid plans are billed monthly in advance through our payment provider, Stripe, and renew automatically. You can cancel at any time from your account settings; cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period, and you keep access until then.

Payments are handled securely by Stripe, which accepts major credit and debit cards. SafeCart never stores your full card details.

Fees already paid are non-refundable except where required by law. Because you can cancel at any time and keep access until the end of the period you have paid for, you are never billed for a period you have chosen to cancel. See our Terms of Use for details.

If you need to monitor more than 1,000 active products, contact us at [email protected] to discuss the capacity your catalog requires.

SafeCart encrypts data in transit and at rest, enforces row-level security so each account can only access its own data, and continuously monitors the platform for issues. You can read the full details on our Security & Trust page.

Your data is hosted on enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure in the EU region, which supports GDPR alignment and data residency expectations. See our Security & Trust page for more.

Yes. SafeCart is built to comply with the GDPR, and we offer a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) for business customers. You can review our DPA online, and request a signed copy at [email protected].

Yes. You can delete your account and associated data from your account settings at any time. Once deleted, your data is removed in line with the retention periods described in our Privacy Policy.

No. SafeCart uses only essential cookies needed to keep you logged in and secure. We do not use analytics, advertising, or cross-site tracking cookies. See our Cookie Policy for the full picture.

You can reach our team any time at [email protected]. We're happy to help with onboarding, billing, integrations, or any questions about product safety monitoring.

The EU GPSR aims to ensure the safety of consumer products in the EU market and protect consumer health. It establishes a broad-based legislative framework that:

• Fills gaps in existing sector-specific regulations
• Ensures a high level of consumer protection
• Provides special protection for vulnerable groups:
  • Children
  • Older persons
  • Persons with disabilities

Included Products ✅

• Second-hand products
• Repaired/reconditioned items
• Products used in services

Excluded Products ❌

• Antiques
• Medicinal products
• Food and feed products (except for food contact materials)
• Aircraft and plant protection products

The GPSR fully applies to products sold online and through other distance selling methods. A product is considered available on the EU market if the sale is targeted at EU consumers.

Key Determining Factors 🎯

• Shipping areas
• Languages used
• Payment methods
• Currency

Important Note: Simply having a website accessible in the EU is not sufficient to be considered targeting EU consumers.

Not at this time. SafeCart helps you meet any of the technical and documentation requirements under the EU General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), but we do not currently act as an EU Authorized Representative.

If you are a non-EU seller, GPSR may require you to appoint an EU-based representative. We're actively working on partnerships to simplify this process and will recommend trusted services soon.

1. Physical Characteristics 📦

• Mechanical properties
• Chemical composition
• Product presentation

2. User Considerations 👥

• Impact on vulnerable consumers
• Cybersecurity risks (for connected products)
• Environmental risks affecting health and safety

3. Lifecycle Analysis ⚡

• Entire product lifecycle coverage
• Potential risks from new technologies
• Impact of updates and modifications

1. Safety Processes 🔒

• Implementing internal safety procedures
• Maintaining technical documentation
• Ensuring product traceability

2. Risk Management ⚠️

• Conducting risk analyses
• Providing necessary safety information
• Regular safety monitoring

3. Compliance & Cooperation 📋

• Working with market surveillance authorities
• Following verification procedures
• Maintaining proper documentation

Yes. The GPSR applies to used and reconditioned products. If you regularly sell consumer goods within the EU, you must:

Required Actions ✅

1. Ensure products are safe
2. Check against EU Safety Gate system
3. Maintain basic product details
4. Be prepared for product recalls

Pro Tip: Use SafeCart to automatically monitor your products against the EU Safety Gate database.

If you're selling into the EU from outside Europe, yes — you may need an Authorized Representative based in the EU.

SafeCart doesn’t provide this service directly (yet), but we help prepare everything your EU rep will ask for — including your risk assessments, Product Safety Passport, and technical file.

We’ll also be adding partner options soon, so stay tuned.

A complete Product Safety Passport should include:

Essential Information 📝

• Product name
• GTIN/barcode
• Manufacturer/importer contact info
• Batch or serial number

Safety Information ⚠️

• Known risks or warnings
• CE marking (if applicable)

Digital Elements 🔗

• Link to safety information
• Hosted HTML page or QR code

Best Practice: Keep all information up-to-date and easily accessible for consumers and authorities.