Nicaragua has adopted national legislation based on or influenced by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law on Electronic Signatures.

Nicaragua has not signed the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts.

Nicaragua has not adopted national legislation based on or influenced by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law on Electronic Commerce.

The law Consumer and Users' Rights Protection Law and its regulation provide a comprehensive framework for consumer protection that also applies to online transactions.

According to Art. 10 of Commercial Code, legal entities in Nicaragua (including entities with foreign national shareholders) must have a legal representative who must be either a Nicaraguan national or a foreign national residing in Nicaragua. In addition, according to Art. 9 of Foreign Agents Law, foreign agents are required to register with the Nicaraguan Government and file reports on all funds and donations received from foreign entities and how they are used.
The law defines “foreign agents” as any person who performs or works as an agent, representative, employee, service provider or any other activity subject to the orders, requirement, instruction, direction, supervision, control from a foreign entity or, from an individual or legal entity whose activities are, directly or indirectly, supervised, directed, controlled, financed or subsidized, in whole or in part, by foreign individuals, Governments, capital, businesses or funds, directly or through a third party, be it an individual or legal entities. It is reported that legal experts have expressed concern that the law is written so broadly that the government could apply it to any entity.

Nicaragua does not implement any de minimis threshold, which is the minimum value of goods below which customs do not charge duties.

It is reported that some ICT goods, including wireless gateways, satellite equipment and telephones, require type approval and certification in Nicaragua. Companies can use existing international test reports for the homologation process to obtain Nicaraguan Institute of Telecommunications and Postal Services (TELCOR) approval. Technical documents will be reviewed and validated in the approval process.

It is reported that starting in 2019, Nicaragua’s Customs Authority (DGA) began systematically seeking proof of the country of origin of products that had previously been established to originate in the United States, including through a comprehensive questionnaire to importers seeking detailed information about the products. Multiple businesses have reported that the requested information includes proprietary business data or trade secrets. Businesses have sought to make arrangements with the DGA to establish proof of origin without publishing trade secrets in questionnaires, such as, through site visits to production plants and staff interviews. However, it is reported that the DGA has rejected those proposals and in multiple cases has initiated administrative processes to remove preferential treatment and also seek retroactive tariffs for the time that the product was imported with preferential treatment.

The indicator "6.2.4 - Government Internet shut down in practice" of the V-Dem Dataset, which measures whether the government has the technical capacity to actively make internet service cease, thus interrupting domestic access to the internet or whether the government has decided to do so, has a score of 2 in Nicaragua. This corresponds to "The government shut down domestic access to the Internet several times this year."

It is reported that a basic legal framework on intermediary liability beyond copyright infringement is absent in Nicaragua's law and jurisprudence.

The 2020 Special Cybercrimes Law contains significant punishments for online activities and is applicable to social media users and media outlets. The law allows to punish administrators of technological platforms that intervene in the content (Art. 16). It is reported that this law clearly pretends to condemn legitimate forums for online expression, association and meetings. It does so through the use of vague and undefined terms that can be applied arbitrarily or discretionally, resulting in legal uncertainty.

It is reported that a basic legal framework on intermediary liability for copyright infringement is absent in Nicaragua's law and jurisprudence.

According to Art. 19 of Personal Data Protection Law, all personal data shall be kept for five years, or for the term that the parties agree upon, even in the event of the personal data no longer being adequate, proportional, or necessary for the purposes that it was created.

According to Art. 36 of Law No. 1042, telecom providers must retain data for all users for one year. A local judge may issue an order, at the National Police or Prosecutor General’s request, to force internet providers to release specific information about an individual customer, as well as collect, extract, or record data about this customer, such as real-time data traffic.

As part of the implementation of Law No. 1042, the "Instituto Nicaragüense de Telecomunicaciones y Correos" (TELCOR, Nicaraguan Institute of Telecommunications and Postal Services) published the Administrative Agreement 001-2021 on Regulations for the Preservation of Data and Information. Art. 3 requires telecommunications companies to collect and preserve any data necessary to: trace a communication; identify the recipient of a communication; identify the time, date, and duration of a communication; identify the type of communication, such as mobile phone, internet, or landline phone; identify the equipment used to conduct a communication; and identify the geolocation of the equipment used for communication. In addition, companies offering community repeaters and trunk links must be able to submit information on the services they provided. Art. 5 of the agreement further requires companies to store the relevant information for up to 12 months.

Nicaragua has not joined any free trade agreement committing to open transfers of cross-border data flows.