Are there any changes to Amazon store credit terms? They have been officially implemented

Amazon recently released an update on the Japanese site, introducing a new page in the seller backend to track the reserved amount of a single order.

The announcement stated that starting from September 13, the backend payment report will have a new reserved transaction page. The page will list the current reserved order information, transaction amount and payment date, and if the seller has received an invoice payment order, the order will also be displayed on this page.

The so-called reserved transaction actually means the store's credit period. Amazon usually reserves the seller's sales revenue for several days after the order delivery date before paying it to the seller to ensure that if a buyer applies for a refund during this period, if the seller is unable to handle it, Amazon can return the order amount by the original route.

Amazon originally did not have a credit period. As long as the seller uploaded the order number and clicked "Confirm to send", the order amount would be transferred to the seller's store balance. However, in the early days, there were sellers who took advantage of the situation by selling popular products at low prices and placing large orders. After uploading fake order numbers, they directly withdrew the money and ran away, causing Amazon to suffer greatly. That is why Amazon set up a credit period to ensure that it would not suffer losses due to sellers running away.

The payment period is generally determined based on the seller's overall risk and historical performance assessment, and is generally about 7 days after the delivery date (that is, the "DD+7" policy). At the same time, if the seller uses an Amazon delivery service provider, Amazon will capture the actual delivery date of the order as the DD for calculation. If there is no valid tracking data, the payment period will be calculated from the estimated latest delivery date.

With this new feature, sellers can easily check how much of the current store balance is reserved and cannot be withdrawn on the backend page, and can also see which orders are being reserved. At first glance, it does not have much impact on sellers. After all, it only makes the reserved amount and order information transparent. If it is helpful, it is to make sellers plan cash flow more clearly, and there is no essential change. However, this transparency of funds sends an important signal to Amazon - it is ready to embrace regulation.

Even though we sellers think that payment terms are normal, overseas regulatory agencies see this as a monopoly. Once the seller has delivered the goods, or even after the customer has signed for them, the money will still be held in Amazon's hands for more than a week. With millions of sellers and billions of dollars in transaction volume, Amazon will hold the money for a week. There is a lot of room for capital operation. Not to mention, the profit from buying a Yu'ebao account in 7 days alone is millions of dollars. Moreover, with the support of Amazon's huge size, the capital operation returns will only be higher.

Although Amazon may not be interested in this amount of money, it is not a small amount. If the regulatory authorities take it seriously, the consequences will be very serious. Previously, Amazon was ordered by the state government to return more than 60 million US dollars in driver bonuses and was fined heavily because it withheld the driver's bonuses and delayed paying them.

According to this line of thinking, Amazon's credit period mechanism also withholds sellers' sales revenue to some extent. Although it can be justified from the perspective of risk control, if the relevant terms are not sufficient and the payment management is not transparent, it may still cause trouble for the regulator. Now that the reserved funds are sorted out, it will be safer when facing regulatory intervention in the future.

Amazon's overall policy is stable. On the one hand, it is fighting against regulation by various means, attracting sellers and consumers, and on the other hand, it is preparing for the upcoming regulation. This also shows that Amazon's top management is not sure of winning the regulation and split, especially since the government has played a lot of cards recently. Amazon has not yet responded to it, and it is probably preparing for some big move!