Are you getting ready to sell on an international Amazon marketplace in the UK, Germany, France, Itay or Spain?
Keep reading to find out how to finish setting up your Amazon selling account and how to navigate the new requirements that Amazon has put in place..
New Requirements and Precautions
As you may have heard, Amazon has made it more difficult to activate your selling account and verify your payments account in an attempt to prevent money laundering. Getting the right documents and jumping through all of Amazon’s hoops can be a nuisance.
Basically, Amazon now gathers identification data from sellers to help prove to authorities, like the IRS in the United States, that Amazon is hosting, and you are running, a legal and legitimate business.
When creating a new Amazon seller account, much of the process remains the same. You provide information about yourself and your company, put in some bank information, then get a robot call to confirm a PIN number.
This is where Amazon introduces the extra security questions – a new form with 3 main stages, which get activated as you go through each of the questions:
Stage 1:
The first things you’ll be asked for are:
- Contact Person – this is who will be accessing the payments account, making transfers, etc. The information needed is basic: full name and address, email, place of birth, identification card/ passport. Note: If the contact person is the same as the beneficiary, check the “I am the legal representative” option. If this is checked, Step 2 below is no longer needed.
- Beneficiary Details – The owner and existing partners. Everyone with at least a 20% stake in the business must be mentioned.
- Bank Account – Only required if you haven’t already added one in the account setup process.
Stage 2:
Once you have your bank account, contact person and beneficiary added, you’ll need to provide the following:
- Micropayment Verification – Amazon will send a small deposit to your bank account. Generally, this takes less than the 3-10 days Amazon says it does. Once received, you can confirm the amount deposited to verify your access to the bank account.
- Letter of Authorization – This needs to be on a company letterhead, with the name of the contact person written exactly as you submitted it in the Contact Person section and the company address exactly the same as the one you submitted when opening the selling account in the previous steps. Plus it has to be signed by the business owner.
- Tax Identity Information – For the IRS, if the passport, address, company, etc. connects you to the United States.
Stage 3:
Finally, you may need to upload supporting documentation, which varies from marketplace to marketplace. The documents that Amazon may ask for include:
- A utility bill for the beneficiary and the contact person, if you added one. These can’t be older than 3 months, the name and the address on them have to be exactly the same as previously indicated on Amazon, including middle names, postal codes etc.
- A utility bill for the company official address. This requirement varies.
- The company’s registration documents and certificate of incorporation. This requirement varies. If your official company address has changed since incorporation, Amazon might not like that your current address, the one you submit, is not the same as in the registration form, so you might have to get a proof of the address change when you get the certificate.
- Scans of pieces of identification for the contact person and beneficiary.
How SellerEngine Services Can Help Setting up your Selling Account
Whatever their reasons, the hassle of completing these new steps has kept many sellers from expanding internationally. Getting a passport for those who don’t already have one, receiving and incorporation certificate and everything else does take time.
However, expanding to a new international marketplace can be an incredibly profitable step to take.
That’s why SellerEngine Services is here to help. As part of our international expansion package, we can help you navigate the new requirements associated with setting up a new international selling account. If you hit a snag, we’ll help you keep moving forward and get your account up and running!