Navigating ‘in trade’ and personal accounts on Trade Me

Trade Me offers two types of memberships you can create on the site – an ‘in trade’ business membership, and a personal membership. Anyone can create a personal account, as long as you don’t have one already. Anyone can also create a Trade Me business account, but the two accounts need to be kept completely separate. This means that things like listings and feedback aren’t transferable, and belong to the account from which they originate.

So, if you only have an ‘in trade’ business account currently and would like to be able to sell personal goods separately, feel free to go ahead and create that personal account!

Outside of having one personal and one business account per member, we don't allow multiple accounts on Trade Me. If you operate more than one business or in more than one location, we may be able to consider your circumstances. This is a very rare situation and these accounts need to be approved by our Trust and Safety Team before they are created, as they’re created at our discretion.

This is because we don't want buyers to be put in a position where they don't know who they're buying from, and we also don’t want to make them feel like they’ve been tricked in any way (especially in cases where they’ve blacklisted a seller previously).

If you have any questions about creating a second Trade Me account, it’s always best to touch base with our Customer Experience team before you create the membership. That way, you shouldn’t run into any surprises later down the line.