How To Create An Amazon Seller Account (As An International Seller)
I’m going to teach you how to open up a USA-based Amazon seller account so that you can sell to USA residents even if you don’t live in the United States. As a seller based outside the United States, you’re welcome to sell on amazon.com as long as you meet their requirements.
Requirements:
Countries Accepted:
You need to be living in one of the 136 countries that Amazon accepts registrations from. I know I’ve got a lot of readers who are based in the UK, Australia, Canada, Europe, India, Israel, and the good news is that all of these countries are accepted in Amazon’s 136 countries.
You can find out if your country is accepted by following this link https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200405020
Credit Card or Debit:
You need a credit card or a debit card from a major credit card company. And these include MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, and JC B. They will not accept prepaid credit cards or debit cards and this includes a Payoneer card.
You will need a credit card or a debit card that is not prepaid, but again, you can use your own local one. It doesn’t have to be one based in the United States
Phone Number:
You will need a phone number so that they can call or text at a verification code. This can be your own local one. It doesn’t need to be one based in the United States
Bank Account:
You need a bank account that can accept Amazon’s electronic payments so that you can get paid the money that you earn. If you live in the UK or Australia, New Zealand, India, you should be able to accept payments directly into your bank account.
But, if you live outside of that, you need to double-check to see if you can accept electronic payments from Amazon in your currency.
The workaround solution for this that is fully supported by Amazon is to use Payoneer. Payoneer is a service that will accept USD payments and then deposit them into your local bank account regardless of what currency it is.
For example, if you live in Israel you will need to use Payoneer to receive funds, as shekels are not eligible for Amazon electronic payments.
That’s it.
That’s all you need, to start selling on amazon.com.
How To Open An Amazon Pro Merchant Account
I’m now going to show you step-by-step how to open an Amazon pro merchant account. Now, you don’t have to open a pro merchant account, you could open an individual seller account if you were low on the side up money. It can be a bit tricky to find this option but I’ll show you where to locate it.
When you open a pro merchant account you get a free 30-day trial. After that, it’s going to cost you $39.99 a month. If you work hard in those 30 days and you list items and you start selling them, then you won’t even blink when the 30 days come around to renew your subscription.
Go to https://sell.amazon.com/sell.html. Click on start your free trial if you want to open an individual seller account for free.
Once you’ve clicked on start your free trial, you can create your account, type in your name, email, and the password that you want to use. Click submit once you’ve entered in those details.
There are lots of benefits to having a pro account but you don’t need to have a pro account. That’s up to you. You can sell for free as an individual. So type in your name and then click that you’ve read and accepted the terms and conditions, and of course, I would recommend that you’ve read them before you take them and then click Next from there.
On next page, you’re going to give information about your business. Your business address and you can use your home personal address if you like, you need to pick a business name for your store, but you are able to change this later so if you don’t have a brand name for your business don’t worry, just enter something.
You have to verify your account by phone. You can get them to call or text you. I find that calling is more reliable. They’re going to give you a pin code. When Amazon calls you and you pick up the phone they will ask you to type that pin code into your phone to verify.
I typed in 1863 when they called me and so verification was successfully completed. And then once you’ve done that, you just click Next.
You need to add your credit card. Keep in mind, you can not use a prepaid credit card or a prepaid debit card. It has to be something that can be charged so no prepaid cards.
And it doesn’t have to be an American card. You can use your own card as long as it’s worth one of the big credit companies like Visa or MasterCard or American Express.
Just type it and then you click Next.
What will about to hit is the tax information section.
You need to do what’s called a tax interview to show Amazon that you are not a u.s. seller. If you were a u.s. seller, you would have to give them a tax identification number like a social security number. But you are not a u.s. person, so you need to fill out this form.
The first thing to do is to select what type of beneficial owner you are? I selected an individual but it depends upon whatever you are a partnership, in this, you would select a partnership. You do need to enter what country you are a citizen of? And then you need to enter in your full name and your address.
Another important thing here is that if you were a US citizen you would be withholding some tax at a certain point as a seller because of your American tax laws.
But because you’re an international seller you’re going to be exempt from that because you’re not paying income tax to America you’re paying it to your own local country. If you live outside the United States chances are none of these apply to you, so click Save and continue.
Here you can view the w8ben form that you are filling out virtually and make sure it’s all correct and if it’s all correct, click Save and continue.
Now we need to sign electronically to say that, yes, this is all correct. Go through and you need to check all of these boxes if you want to continue with creating your account.
You need to type in your name, you do not need to provide a written signature. Just your name is enough to do an electronic signature, and then you need to enter your email address and select what title you are in the business.
Then you can review the w8ben form that you filled out. And if it’s all good, click exit interview.
This is just a survey, and you can just click skip for now. The survey is not something you need to fill out it’s completely optional.
You’ll be taken to your pro merchant account and you can start selling right away.
As you can see, it’s super simple. It doesn’t matter if you live outside of the United States, you can sell on Amazon as well. It is super simple to start an Amazon account as a non-us a citizen.
