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Founders Assembly
Summary record of Fellows roundtable 7
Symbol: RC/A/2026/FR.7
Date: 20 September 2026
Status: Published
Kind: Minutes
Chair: Robert Nikic, Advisory Council Chair, presiding
Sittings: Asia-Pacific, 06:00 UTC; Europe/Africa/Americas, 16:00 UTC
Attendance: 14 participants: 12 members and two Secretariat staff, representing 9 countries.
Author/signatory: Robert Nikic, Advisory Council Chair, presiding
Recipient: —
Agenda
- Review of the Platform Fairness Standard following adoption and delivery of letters to platform chief executives.
- Practical issues raised during the open consultation on the proposed 15-Day Pay Standard.
- Consultation participation, evidence handling and protection of member anonymity.
- Decisions, assignments and the next session.
The chair opened the Asia-Pacific sitting at 06:00 UTC and the Europe/Africa/Americas sitting at 16:00 UTC. He noted that the record combined the two sittings and that members had been told not to identify their businesses or attribute another member’s experience without permission. He recalled that the Assembly’s work proceeds from reports through a five-part pattern test, a draft, public consultation and an Assembly ballot, followed by letters to the chief executives able to adopt the resulting standard. The roundtable was advisory and did not replace any council or Assembly decision.
The chair reported the Assembly’s position as of the date of the meeting. The Platform Fairness Standard, PL-001, had been adopted by the Assembly on 13 August as RC/PL/2026/1. Letters to seven chief executives had been issued as RC/PL/2026/2 and delivered between 24 and 26 August. No replies were on record. He emphasized that delivery was a recorded process stage, not evidence of acceptance, rejection or implementation. Members were asked to distinguish those statuses in public communications.
The chair further noted that the Cashflow Council’s consultation on CF-001, the proposed 15-Day Pay Standard, remained open. It had opened on 25 August and was due to close on 24 September. The roundtable could identify points requiring clarification, but could not amend the consultation draft or anticipate the Assembly ballot. Members were invited to submit evidence through the stated consultation route before its closing date.
For context, the chair recalled that MSMEs account for approximately 90 per cent of businesses, 60–70 per cent of employment and around half of GDP worldwide.1 He said these figures supported the Assembly’s attention to small-business conditions but did not replace evidence about particular practices. Participants were reminded that a report’s usefulness depended on describing what happened, how often, and with what corroboration—not on the size or public profile of the business involved.
Ms. Aroha Te Rangi of Wellington, New Zealand, speaking in the Asia-Pacific sitting, said that a notice of suspension was of limited practical use if it arrived after access had already been removed and did not identify the listing or conduct in question. She supported the Standard’s requirement for written notice and a specific reason before an adverse action, subject to urgent safety or legal cases being handled through a clearly explained exception. She asked that any such exception require a record of the reason for acting first and a prompt subsequent review.
Mr. Minh Tran of Da Nang, Viet Nam, said that a seller receiving a generic notice could not readily tell whether the issue concerned a product listing, identity documents or an account transaction. He recommended that implementation guidance give cases of sufficiently specific reasons without purporting to dictate the outcome of individual cases. He also urged that the guidance make clear how a member could submit corrected documents and how the platform would confirm receipt. The chair noted that these were proposed implementation details, not additional text adopted by the Assembly.
Ms. Farah Al-Masri of Amman, Jordan, raised the importance of a review by a person. She said that an automated acknowledgement or a second message generated from the same automated process would not give a small business a meaningful route to contest an error. She proposed that a platform identify when a human reviewer had considered the case and provide a way to supply new information. She did not ask the Assembly to presume that every initial decision was wrong; her concern was that a review should be capable of changing the outcome when the record warranted it.
Mr. Luca Bianchi of Bologna, Italy, focused on payout holds. He said that a hold with no stated end point could prevent a business from meeting payroll or paying suppliers even when its listings remained active. He supported the Standard’s time limit and proposed that notices state the date of the next review, the information still required and the means of contacting the review team. The chair observed that the adopted Standard calls for a time limit on payout holds; the roundtable could recommend clear operational information but could not substitute a new period for the adopted wording.
Ms. Njeri Wanjiku of Nairobi, Kenya, said consistency across countries mattered because small businesses may sell to customers in several jurisdictions while having little capacity to maintain different appeal processes. She supported the Standard’s request for the same protections in every country where a platform operates. She also cautioned that members should report differences they had personally encountered rather than infer a platform-wide policy from a single case. Participants agreed that country, date and type of action were useful evidence fields, while personal and business identifiers should be removed from shared summaries.
Mr. Carlos Méndez of Bogotá, Colombia, asked how the Standard related to existing legal requirements. The chair noted that the European Union’s Platform-to-Business Regulation requires a statement of reasons in specified circumstances involving restriction or suspension of business users, and provides at least 30 days’ notice before termination of the whole service.2 He stressed that the Assembly’s standard was an advocacy instrument and that this reference was not legal advice or a claim that one regional rule applied everywhere. Members agreed that comparative law could help explain why a proposed safeguard was workable, while the Assembly’s request remained for consistent protections across operating countries.
On CF-001, Ms. Chidinma Okafor of Enugu, Nigeria, said that the phrase “undisputed invoice” should not allow a buyer to delay payment by raising a vague objection close to the due date. She recommended asking consultees to describe when an objection was raised, what information the buyer provided and whether the undisputed portion was paid. The group agreed that evidence should distinguish an invoice genuinely under review from an invoice left unpaid without a specific explanation.
Mr. Arjun Patel of Ahmedabad, India, said that a short payment period could be difficult to assess unless the starting point was clear. He recommended that the consultation invite cases recording invoice submission, acknowledgement, any request for correction, the date an objection was communicated and the eventual payment date. He also supported asking buyers to publish payment-time information in a form that allowed suppliers to understand the measure used. He cautioned that individual members should not be asked to disclose confidential contract terms when a redacted timeline would establish the relevant point.
Ms. Sofia Reyes of Cebu City, Philippines, said that automatic interest was important only if a small supplier could understand how it was calculated and did not have to undertake disproportionate steps to claim it. She recommended that the consultation ask whether late-payment terms were visible before work began and whether suppliers had received an explanation of any deduction. She noted that the proposed standard also included publication of payment times and that consultation evidence should address that part of the proposal, rather than focusing exclusively on the number of days.
Mr. Daniel Morgan of Cardiff, United Kingdom, referred to the government’s late-payment legislation and consultation work as relevant context. He said members should avoid describing the proposed 15-day period as an existing legal requirement. He supported a plain-language comparison between the proposed standard and the different arrangements reported by members, provided that the comparison stated its jurisdiction and date. The chair agreed that public materials must distinguish an Assembly proposal from a law or policy already in force.
Ms. Samira Haddad of Marseille, France, asked that members who had not yet contributed be given a practical way to do so before the consultation closed. She proposed a short evidence checklist rather than a further general appeal for comments. The checklist, she said, should prompt for the payment timeline, whether the invoice was disputed, the reason given, any interest paid and the effect of delay, while allowing a respondent to omit identifying details. The chair noted that the consultation remained open until 24 September and that any checklist must not narrow the range of evidence respondents could submit.
In the Europe/Africa/Americas sitting, Ms. Elena Petrova of Sofia, Bulgaria, supported the proposed checklist but asked that it include a “not known” option. A supplier may know that payment was delayed without knowing the buyer’s internal approval date or the reason for an administrative hold. Requiring speculation would weaken the record. Members agreed that uncertainty should be recorded honestly and that reports should separate direct observation from information learned later.
Mr. Diego Álvarez of Montevideo, Uruguay, raised the need to avoid double counting when one event generated several reports—for instance, a suspension, a withheld payout and a later listing removal. He recommended that the evidence team preserve links between related reports while counting distinct events carefully. He also supported keeping member identities separate from published pattern summaries. The chair said that the five-part pattern test—Volume, Frequency, Consistency, Spread and Corroboration—requires careful handling of both repeated reports and the evidence that supports them.
Ms. Grace Ndlovu of Harare, Zimbabwe, said that members sometimes hesitate to report because they fear that a platform, buyer or other counterparty might infer who supplied the evidence. She recommended that consultation summaries use practice descriptions rather than company names and remove details that are not needed to explain the pattern. She also asked the Secretariat to remind members that anonymity does not mean that unsupported claims can be treated as established fact. The chair confirmed that the Assembly’s public-facing descriptions should not identify a member’s business and should not turn an individual report into an accusation against a named company.
Participants reviewed the figures then available for the Assembly. As of 20 September, 1,564 members were seated in 49 countries, and 4,765 reports had been filed from 50 countries. The council totals were recorded as follows:
Council Reports Platform 1,893 Cashflow 1,255 Fair Play 562 Trade 404 Red Tape 255 Resilience 248 Team 148 Total 4,765 The chair stated that the figures were the Secretariat’s dated internal totals and should not be silently combined with later reporting periods. The roundtable did not treat the distribution of reports as proof that one council’s subject was more serious than another’s.
In discussion, members supported keeping two distinct evidence tracks: one concerning the operation of the adopted Platform Fairness Standard and one concerning the CF-001 consultation proposal. Reports about platform action would continue to be assessed under the established pattern test and would not be presented as proof that a platform had adopted the Standard. Cashflow submissions would be logged as consultation evidence and would not be described as a final Assembly position before the consultation closed and the subsequent decision process had run.
The chair summarized the decisions. First, the roundtable would recommend that the Secretariat prepare a concise PL-001 implementation note covering specific reasons, human review, payout-hold review dates, cross-country consistency and safe treatment of urgent exceptions. The note would be labelled as guidance for discussion, not as an amendment to RC/PL/2026/1. Second, the Cashflow Council would be asked to consider adding the suggested evidence prompts to its consultation materials while the consultation remained open. Third, future public summaries would continue to use descriptions of practices and not name companies in member accounts. Fourth, no statement would imply that any of the seven chief executives had replied to the letters, or that delivery of a letter constituted agreement.
The chair confirmed that these decisions were recommendations and process directions within the Secretariat’s remit; they did not adopt a new standard, determine an individual report or alter the Assembly’s Rules of Procedure. Any change to a standard would require the appropriate council drafting, consultation and Assembly process. Participants could continue to submit evidence through the established channels and could request correction of any inaccurate summary of their contribution.
The chair thanked members for keeping their contributions specific and for respecting the anonymity of other participants. He closed the Asia-Pacific sitting after confirming that its recommendations had been carried into the combined record, and closed the Europe/Africa/Americas sitting after reviewing the assignments. The Secretariat was directed to circulate the record for factual correction before publication, without inviting participants to alter the substance of another member’s account.
Action items
Secretariat: Prepare a draft PL-001 implementation note addressing notice content, human review, payout-hold review dates, consistent protections and documented urgent exceptions. Mark the note as non-binding discussion guidance and circulate it to the Platform Council for review.
Cashflow Council: Consider, before the CF-001 consultation closes on 24 September, whether to provide an optional evidence checklist covering invoice dates, objections, undisputed amounts, payment, interest and publication of payment times. Preserve the ability to submit other relevant evidence.
Secretariat evidence team: Review consultation submissions for linked events and duplicate reporting; distinguish direct observation from later information; remove unnecessary identifying details from public summaries.
Members: Submit any further CF-001 consultation evidence by the stated closing date and identify uncertainty rather than infer facts not personally known.
Presiding chair: Ensure the published record distinguishes delivered letters from replies and records any subsequent change in seat status only when supported by a received communication.
Next session
The next monthly Open Table is scheduled for 20 October 2026, with an Asia-Pacific sitting at 06:00 UTC and a Europe/Africa/Americas sitting at 16:00 UTC. The Secretariat will publish the agenda and participation arrangements in advance.
Robert NikicAdvisory Council Chair, presiding
Sources
United Nations, Micro-, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Day. https://www.un.org/en/observances/micro-small-medium-businesses-day
Regulation (EU) 2019/1150, Article 4. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2019/1150/oj/eng
Notes and sources
Sources
This document has no standing until adopted under the Founders Charter. Reseated Councils is not affiliated with the United Nations.