Selling jewellery online: hallmarking decides first
Compulsory hallmarking in India is a gold order, and it applies district by district rather than everywhere. Registration is free and instant, articles under two grams are exempt, and most D2C jewellery brands are not covered at all. The useful work is knowing which of those applies to you.
- The compulsion is district-wise. BIS's own phase-wise list runs from 256 districts dated 23 June 2021 to 392 districts across eight phases after the 3 August 2026 notification. Check your registered outlet's district before assuming a nationwide rule.
- Since 1 July 2021 a gold hallmark is three marks, one of which is the six-digit HUID. Declared stock carrying the older pre-HUID mark was only sellable until 30 June 2023, so legacy inventory is dead inventory.
- Registration through the single window portal is instant, carries no fee and is valid for lifetime, and BIS says jewellers with annual turnover up to Rs 40 lakh fall outside mandatory hallmarking. The order itself exempts any article weighing less than two grams.
- Imitation and fashion jewellery are outside the hallmarking order entirely. The obligation moves to pack and listing declarations and to substantiating any metal, purity or plating claim you print.
Most brands selling gold jewellery online in India meet the compliance layer at the wrong moment, usually when a listing is pulled. The layer is not complicated. It is narrower than the internet suggests, and almost every summary you will read asserts a nationwide position that does not exist.
One order, one metal, and only where it has been notified
The instrument is the Hallmarking of Gold Jewellery and Gold Artefacts Order, 2020, notified by the Department of Consumer Affairs as S.O. 205(E) on 15 January 2020. Read the title. It covers gold jewellery and gold artefacts, and its table names one standard, IS 1417:2016. There is no equivalent compulsory order for silver.
Then read the annexure, because your obligation follows your registered sales outlet, not your customer’s pin code. Compulsion arrives district by district, not across the country. BIS publishes a phase-wise coverage document on bis.gov.in. Phase one covered 256 districts and was dated 23 June 2021. Since then the list has grown by 32 districts on 4 April 2022, 55 on 6 September 2023, 18 on 5 November 2024, 12 on 31 July 2025, seven on 2 March 2026, five on 28 April 2026 and seven more on 3 August 2026. That is 392 districts across eight phases. A lot of India. Not all of India, and the count moves roughly twice a year.
The identification requirement is a six-digit code that keeps moving
BIS states in its hallmarking FAQ that since 1 July 2021 a hallmark consists of three marks: the BIS logo, the purity of the article in caratage and fineness, and a six-digit alphanumeric HUID number. Three marks, not the older jeweller-and-centre set that a lot of legacy stock still carries.
The amendment of 3 March 2023, S.O. 1047(E), inserted the hard line: after 31 March 2023, no person shall sell, display or offer to sell gold jewellery or gold artefacts unless it is hallmarked in accordance with IS 1417:2016. A follow-up order dated 31 March 2023 let declared old stock bearing the pre-July-2021 hallmark run until 30 June 2023. That window closed. Pre-HUID stock is not sellable stock.
On caratage, the 4 April 2022 amendment, S.O. 1594(E), removed the words limiting the order to 14, 18 and 22 caratages. BIS’s FAQ now lists six caratages permitted under IS 1417:2016, from 14K through 24KS. Read that page before building the dropdown, because it moves when the standard is amended.
The part brands miss is that HUID is a live record, not a stamp. BIS’s guidelines for jewellers describe a HUID transfer module on the manakonline portal through which a jeweller updates an article’s status: sold, transferred to another jeweller, damaged or melted, or returned by a customer and back to unsold. If you take returns, that is a reverse-logistics step almost nobody has in an SOP.
Who has to register, and who is genuinely outside it
Registration is with BIS, through the National Single Window System. BIS’s own jewellers page says the certificate is granted instantly, that no fee is charged for grant of registration, and that it stands valid for lifetime. No reason to delay it, and none to pay an agent for it.
The same page states that jewellers with annual turnover up to Rs 40 lakh do not fall within the purview of mandatory hallmarking. That is a real line, and a number of young online-first brands are sitting under it without knowing.
Registration brings surveillance. The BIS guidelines provide for at least one market surveillance visit a year, with no prior intimation, in which HUID codes are checked against the article type, weight, photographs, jeweller name and assaying centre on record. The registered jeweller who makes the sale is liable for any shortage in purity. Not your karigar.
The exemptions people misread
Clause 2(3) of the 2020 order lists what the scheme does not reach. Read it literally: any article meant for export conforming to a foreign buyer’s specification; an article with weight less than two grams; an article in the course of consignment from outside India to a recognised assaying and hallmarking centre; any article intended for medical, dental, veterinary, scientific or industrial purposes; any article of gold thread; a manufactured article that is not substantially complete and is intended for further manufacture; and gold bullion in any shape of bar, plate, sheet, foil, rod, wire, strip, tube or coin.
Later amendments added export and re-import under the foreign trade policy, international exhibitions, approved domestic exhibitions, and kundan, polki and jadau jewellery. BIS issued a separate guidance note dated 4 January 2022 defining those three styles.
The two-gram exemption is the one that quietly changes catalogues. A large share of everyday online gold, thin chains, studs, nose pins, falls under it. That is an exemption from hallmarking. It is not permission to be vague about weight or purity on the page.
Imitation and fashion jewellery sit somewhere else
Most Indian D2C jewellery brands are not selling gold at all. They sell brass, alloy, plated and stone-set pieces, which the hallmarking order does not reach. BIS runs several distinct schemes that get conflated in conversation, and hallmarking is not the machinery in our note on BIS and CRS certification for electronics.
That does not leave the category unregulated. It moves the obligation onto your pack and listing, where the general pre-packaged declarations apply, and onto your ability to stand behind what you print. The moment copy says gold plated, 925 silver or anti-tarnish, you have made a testable assertion with no hallmark behind it. The declaration set is in legal metrology labelling for ecommerce.
What the invoice and the listing have to carry
For a hallmarked precious-metal article, BIS’s guidelines for jewellers require the invoice to carry a separate description of each article, the net weight of precious metal, purity in carat and fineness, and hallmarking charges. It must also state that the consumer can get purity verified at any BIS-recognised assaying and hallmarking centre. That applies to retail and to jeweller-to-jeweller sales alike. The same guidelines put hallmarking charges at Rs 45 per article for gold and Rs 35 for silver.
Treat the listing as part of the same disclosure. Caratage, net metal weight and stone weight belong on the page, stated separately, in the invoice’s units. Gross weight alone is how a purity complaint starts. Category access runs through a document check, so assemble the set once against our marketplace document checklist.
This is operational guidance, not legal advice. Where a number decides something, read the gazette order yourself.