Selling online to Bulgaria from abroad: EU distance selling guide

In short: an EU company can sell online to consumers in Bulgaria without a Bulgarian company. Above €10,000 a year in EU distance sales you charge Bulgarian VAT (20% standard rate) through the One Stop Shop in your own country. Bulgarian law requires the pre-contract information in Bulgarian, prices in euro, a 14-day withdrawal right and, since September 24, 2026, an online withdrawal button.

This guide is for online stores in other EU countries that want Bulgarian customers. It covers VAT, the Bulgarian consumer rules, and the habits that decide whether Bulgarians buy from you: courier offices, parcel lockers and cash on delivery, with the setup in CloudCart, the Bulgarian ecommerce platform. Confirm the legal points for your company with your accountant.

What does distance selling to Bulgaria mean for an EU seller?

Distance selling is a sale of goods to a consumer in another EU country, shipped by the seller or on the seller's behalf, with the contract made online. For a store based in another member state, every B2C order delivered to a Bulgarian address is an intra-EU distance sale: no customs, but Bulgarian consumer law, and Bulgarian VAT above the threshold.

Foreign sellers usually enter Bulgaria in one of three ways:

Model	How it works	VAT	Delivery
Ship from your country	Bulgarian orders ship from your warehouse	Your country's VAT up to €10,000 a year in total EU distance sales, then Bulgarian VAT through OSS	An international courier; COD is hard to offer
Stock in Bulgaria	A Bulgarian warehouse or fulfillment partner ships	Usually a Bulgarian VAT registration; ask your accountant	Econt, Speedy, BOX NOW and Sameday, with offices, lockers and cash on delivery
A Bulgarian company	A local company buys and sells in Bulgaria	Bulgarian VAT as a domestic seller	Bulgarian couriers, plus the rules on sales documents

How Bulgarians shop online, with the numbers, is in the guide to ecommerce in Bulgaria. If you decide on a local company, the steps are in company registration in Bulgaria for an online store.

Which VAT do you charge on sales to Bulgarian consumers?

You charge your own country's VAT until your intra-EU distance sales of goods and cross-border digital services to consumers pass €10,000 (excluding VAT) in the current or previous calendar year. Above that, you charge Bulgarian VAT on each sale to a Bulgarian consumer. The €10,000 is one total for all EU countries together, and it applies to sellers established in a single EU country (European Commission, VAT One Stop Shop).

Bulgaria's standard VAT rate is 20% and its reduced rate is 9% (Your Europe, VAT rates).

You do not need a Bulgarian VAT registration to collect Bulgarian VAT. The One Stop Shop (OSS) lets you declare the VAT of every EU country where you sell through one quarterly return in your home country, and your tax office passes the Bulgarian VAT on to the NRA, Bulgaria's National Revenue Agency.

1. Add up your EU distance sales for this year and the previous one, excluding VAT, domestic and B2B sales.
2. Decide before you pass €10,000. You may also charge Bulgarian VAT from the first sale.
3. Register for the OSS Union scheme in your own country, or register for VAT in Bulgaria.
4. Set Bulgarian VAT in the store from the date the rule applies to you, so every Bulgarian order shows the right rate.
5. File the quarterly OSS return with sales and VAT by country, and keep proof of where each customer is, such as the delivery address.

Important: OSS covers sales shipped from your country. If you keep your own stock in a Bulgarian warehouse, sales from that stock are domestic Bulgarian sales and OSS no longer covers them. Settle this with your accountant before you move goods.

The OSS mechanics, from the other side of the border, are in the guide to cross-border ecommerce in the EU. The rates and filing steps are in OSS VAT for cross-border EU sales.

Does an online store selling to Bulgaria have to be in Bulgarian?

Yes, for the information Bulgarian law requires. Article 47(7) of the Bulgarian Consumer Protection Act says the information in a distance sales contract is provided in Bulgarian (Consumer Protection Act, lex.bg, in Bulgarian). A store aimed at Bulgarian consumers therefore needs its product information, terms, prices and checkout in Bulgarian. The Act is enforced by the Commission for Consumer Protection (KZP).

The same Act asks for Bulgarian in several other places. The table lists what a store from abroad has to prepare:

What	The rule	Where it applies in your store
Pre-contract information	Article 47(7): the information in a distance contract is in Bulgarian	Product pages, prices, delivery costs, checkout, terms and the order confirmation
Written product information	Article 5(1): written information about goods must be in Bulgarian, in SI units	Descriptions, sizes, weights and volumes (kg, cm, ml)
Labels	Article 9(1): goods are offered with labels in Bulgarian, or also in Bulgarian	The label on the product or its packaging
Instructions for use	Article 13(3): imported goods that need instructions come with instructions also in Bulgarian	A printed insert or a Bulgarian PDF in the parcel
Product safety information	Articles 71, 72 and 75, in force since February 3, 2026: the safety information under the EU General Product Safety Regulation is given in Bulgarian	Warnings, manufacturer details and safety instructions on the product or in an accompanying document

In Eurostat's data on the origin of sellers (2023), 95.5% of Bulgarians who bought online in the last 3 months bought from sellers in Bulgaria, against 83.0% across the EU (Eurostat, Internet purchases by origin of sellers). Machine translation is a good start for a catalog; have a native speaker read the checkout, the terms and the emails. What the terms must contain is in terms and conditions for an online store. The product safety duties are in GPSR for online sellers.

What are the Bulgarian rules on returns and the withdrawal button?

A Bulgarian consumer can withdraw from an online purchase within 14 days without giving a reason (Article 50), and you refund all payments, including the original delivery cost, within 14 days of being told (Article 54). A return policy built for another EU country mostly carries over, translated into Bulgarian.

The newer rule is the withdrawal function. Article 52a of the Consumer Protection Act, in force since September 24, 2026, requires a store that concludes contracts online to give the consumer a withdrawal function. It is labelled with the Bulgarian words for "withdraw from the contract here" or an equally clear phrase, stays available for the whole withdrawal period, and leads to an acknowledgement on a durable medium, such as an email. It transposes Directive (EU) 2023/2673.

• Who pays for the return. The customer pays to send the goods back, unless you offered to pay or did not tell them about this cost before the purchase.
• When the 14 days start. From the day the customer receives the goods. The customer can withdraw before delivery too.
• Where the parcel goes back. A Bulgarian return address, or a courier return label, reduces disputes.

In CloudCart, the Withdraw from contract app adds this function: a button on the storefront and a step-by-step withdrawal page with email verification. Every confirmed request sends the customer an acknowledgement email, and the window cannot be set below 14 days. On a Bulgarian storefront, the button text can be set to the Bulgarian wording; left empty, the app uses the official translated wording. The full returns process is in returns and consumer rights for an online store.

How should prices be shown to Bulgarian customers?

Prices for Bulgarian customers are in euro, with all taxes included. Bulgaria joined the euro area on January 1, 2026, and mandatory dual display of prices in euro and leva ended on August 8, 2026; since August 9, 2026, traders show prices in euro and may add the leva amount only for information (evroto.bg, the official euro website, in Bulgarian).

For a seller in the euro area, one euro price list can serve Bulgaria. Article 47(1)(5) of the Consumer Protection Act requires a final price with all taxes and fees, and delivery costs shown before the customer is bound. A COD fee or packing charge belongs in the total at checkout: under Article 47(6), a customer who was not informed of an extra cost does not owe it.

If you still have old price lists in leva, the conversion rules are in the guide to euro prices for an online store.

Which couriers deliver your orders in Bulgaria?

Bulgarian online shoppers expect a choice between home delivery, a courier office and a parcel locker, with the price shown at checkout. The couriers that offer this inside Bulgaria are Econt and Speedy (part of DPD, so its CloudCart integration is called DPD Bulgaria), BOX NOW, which delivers only to parcel lockers, and Sameday with its easybox lockers.

Courier in CloudCart	Delivery options	What you need
Econt	Address, Econt office or Econtomat locker; cash on delivery	A courier contract with Econt; parcels are picked up from a sender address
DPD Bulgaria (Speedy)	Address, office or locker in Bulgaria and Romania; cash on delivery	A contract with Speedy
BOX NOW	Parcel lockers only; the customer gets a pickup code by SMS	A BOX NOW contract in the store's operating country; no live rate at checkout, so you set the price
Sameday	Address, office and easybox lockers	Credentials for the Bulgarian or the Romanian Sameday instance; one country per installation
GLS, DHL, DHL Express, Sendcloud, EuShipment	Cross-border parcels into Bulgaria from your country	Your own contract with the courier or aggregator

The Bulgarian couriers collect parcels inside Bulgaria. Shipping from another country means an international courier and, usually, home delivery only. Stock with a Bulgarian warehouse or fulfillment partner opens offices, lockers and COD. How to hand orders to a warehouse is in the guide to fulfillment for an online store, and the couriers are compared in couriers in Bulgaria.

Do you need cash on delivery to sell in Bulgaria?

For most consumer goods, yes. Cash on delivery (COD) lets the customer pay the courier when the parcel arrives, and many Bulgarian shoppers still choose it, especially with a store they do not know yet. In the World Bank's Global Findex survey for Bulgaria (interviews in 2024), only about one in five respondents who had bought online said they usually pay online (Global Findex 2025, Bulgaria, question fin27).

Econt or Speedy collects the cash and transfers it to you later, for a fee set in your contract. For a seller from abroad:

1. COD needs stock in Bulgaria or a partner that ships through a Bulgarian courier. Cross-border couriers rarely collect cash at the door.
2. Every COD order must be matched with the courier's payout. In CloudCart, Econt and DPD report when the customer has paid, and the order is marked as paid automatically, within the plan's limit of synced payouts.
3. Offer cards next to COD. Customers who return pay by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, which removes refused parcels and the COD fee.

The full comparison, with courier fees and refused parcels, is in cash on delivery vs card payments.

Does Ordinance N-18 apply to a foreign seller?

It depends on where and how you trade, so ask your accountant before the first Bulgarian order. Ordinance N-18 is the Bulgarian regulation on recording sales through fiscal devices; for online stores paid by card or COD it allows an alternative regime with a sales document for each order and a monthly report to the NRA. It applies to persons who are obliged to record sales in Bulgaria, which is clearly the case for a Bulgarian company and may be the case when you trade from a Bulgarian base.

A store that ships from another EU country under OSS, with no premises in Bulgaria, is in a different position. Get the answer from your accountant or the NRA in writing.

If N-18 applies to you, CloudCart's N18 Audit app generates the monthly XML file under Annex 38 of the Ordinance from the store's orders, sales and reversals. You download it and submit it through the NRA portal between the 1st and the 15th of the following month. The regime is explained in Ordinance N-18 for an online store.

How do you set up a CloudCart store for Bulgarian customers?

A CloudCart store sells to Bulgaria with settings and apps that already exist in the admin. If your main store is in English, German or Romanian, the Bulgarian storefront is a language store created with the Multilang app.

What you need	Where in the CloudCart admin
A Bulgarian storefront	Apps → Multilang → Stores: a language store with its own domain, currency, theme, couriers and payment methods
Bulgarian product texts	The language store's configuration: product copying, AI translation field by field, a price multiplier and rounding
Bulgarian VAT under OSS	Settings → Geo Zones, then Settings → Taxes and fees: a regional VAT rule with the "One Stop Shop" switch on
Couriers with offices and lockers	Apps: Econt, DPD Bulgaria (Speedy), BOX NOW, Sameday
Cash on delivery and cards	Payment methods: cash on delivery, CloudCart Pay
The withdrawal button	Apps → Withdraw from contract

Multilang syncs the catalog one way, from the main store to the language store, and adds hreflang tags between them. Copying products to a language store and AI product translation are included in CC Master (€249/month billed annually, excluding VAT); all limits are on the pricing page. How several language stores share one catalog is on the multistore page and in the guide to the multilingual online store.

How to start selling to Bulgaria from abroad: step by step

Tax first, then language and law, delivery and payment, and a test order.

1. Settle VAT. Check your EU distance sales against €10,000, decide on OSS with your accountant, and enter the Bulgarian rate from the date it applies.
2. Choose the delivery model. Ship from your country to test demand, or place stock with a Bulgarian warehouse to offer offices, lockers and COD.
3. Create the Bulgarian storefront and translate products, categories, the checkout and the emails. Have a native speaker check the terms and the checkout.
4. Prepare labels, instructions, terms and a returns policy in Bulgarian, with the 14-day withdrawal right, a return address and the withdrawal button.
5. Connect couriers and payments: a Bulgarian courier with offices and lockers, cash on delivery, and cards with Apple Pay and Google Pay.
6. Place a test order end to end: checkout in Bulgarian, payment, shipping label, invoice, a withdrawal request and a refund. Then start advertising in Bulgaria.

CloudCart charges a 0% commission on sales, so the margin on Bulgarian orders stays with your store (how 0% commission works). Questions about setting up a store for Bulgarian customers can go to support@cloudcart.com.

Frequently asked questions