Getting Paid by Amazon

How exactly do Amazon Payments work?  

Amazon is a great way to establish an eCommerce business. But Amazon does have certain policies and procedures that regulate how you conduct your business, and how you get paid. The more you know how Amazon Payments work, the better your experience selling on Amazon.

Basically, once a purchase is cleared (there’s a 30-minute pending period during which the buyer can cancel before the order actually goes forward to fulfillment), you get paid two weeks later, in most cases.

To further explain how Amazon Payments work, in this post we cover:

• Amazon Payments terms and conditions
• When to expect to get paid
• Amazon Account Payment Labels
• How to get payments sooner
• Daily and Next-Day Payouts
• Get paid for what Amazon owes you

Amazon Payments Terms and Conditions

Actual dates of payment are spelled out in the terms and conditions in your agreement for selling on Amazon. Unlike other marketplaces with fixed dates of the 1st and 15th of the month, the terms of Amazon Payments depend on the start date you signed up as an Amazon seller. If, for example, you signed up on the 10th of the month, expect your Amazon Payments two weeks later, or on the 24th.

Terms and conditions that specifically relate to Amazon Payments cover:

• Your active bank account information to receive payments (payments are not delivered to credit card accounts or online payment services)
• The requirement to maintain a positive balance in your bank account
• Fees that are deducted from your payments

When to Expect Payment

Generally, you can expect your Amazon Payments (minus fees) for your sales every two weeks for orders within the previous 14 days successfully fulfilled after seven days. The reason for the seven-day hold is to cover when customers return an order or file a complaint. 

There are exceptions when Amazon Payments take longer. An order for the past two weeks may roll into the next payout period if it:

• Is delivered within seven days of the payout date
• Involves Amazon Payments via a money transfer, which takes three to five business days to process, depending on your bank, before they appear on your Seller’s account; this can take up to 20 days before you receive payment

In addition, Amazon can withhold some or all of your payments as an unavailable balance or account level return set aside to cover refunds and returns. Funds held from a previous settlement period are released on the next payment period.

New sellers and sellers with low-performance metrics are most likely to experience account-level returns. Additional reasons for withholding an account balance are if you have chargebacks or an A-to-Z claim. Funds are released once the chargeback is processed or the claim is resolved.

If you have an unavailable balance for Amazon Payments, you can find out more details about why you are on the Account Health page of Seller Central. The way to avoid such an Amazon account level reserve in the future is to improve your metrics, such as overall customer feedback and fulfillment speed. If you have A-Z claims, the faster you uncover the problems behind the claims and resolve them, the better.

Amazon Payments Label

Note that there are two types of Amazon Payments labels, which can help determine if you are going to get paid within the 14 day payout period:

• Amazon Payments, Inc
• Amazon Services LLC

Amazon Payments Inc covers transactions where buyers paid for an order and the goods shipped. Amazon Services LLC is for transactions where payment is after delivery. 

How to Get Paid Sooner

Need to get paid sooner? You can request this if you qualify. Does your Amazon dashboard contain a Request Transfer button? Then you can initiate a payment before the payout’s regularly scheduled date…maybe. Amazon can still hold your payment until the regular payout, or only release a portion of the available payments.  

However, there are several factors to consider:

• Some fees, such as shipping fees, can be deducted from your transfer request
• You can only make a transfer request once every 24 hours
• It can still take three to five business days for the transfer payment to post to your bank account
• A transfer does not increase the frequency of payments; the 14 day payout period resets from the date of the transfer request, so this is not a way to increase cash flow

Conceivably you could click the Request Transfer button every day and make Amazon Payments issue a daily payout. However, these are not real-time transactions and you are not going to get paid the next day. There is still a 14-day window from the data that a particular sale closed and the order delivered. And, as we’ve already noted, certain transactions may roll into the next payout window.

Amazon sellers in business for more than 10 years may be eligible for next-day (or near enough to next-day)  Amazon Payments. This feature is no longer offered and is only available to certain grandfathered accounts.

Make Sure You Get Paid What You Are Owed

Amazon may owe you money that may not get paid at all, let alone within 14 days. If you are an FBA seller, Amazon owes you money for errors in mishandling your inventory and processing returns as well as cases where your products are damaged or lost. These FBA reimbursements are not always automatic. In fact, in many cases, it’s left up to you to identify when these errors occurred and then to file a claim for reimbursement.

Amazon FBA reimbursements can average roughly anywhere from 1% to 3% of your annual revenues. So if you made $500,000,  Amazon could potentially owe you anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000.  

How can you find out for sure? 

The easiest, least time-consuming, and most affordable way to determine if you are owed FBA reimbursement and submit the appropriate claims is GETIDA (GET Intelligent Data Analytics), a powerful software tool with an experienced team of former Amazon employees to file and follow up on your reimbursement claims.

Go to the GETIDA  website and click the “Free Signup” button. GETIDA software scans the past 18 months of your Seller account for possible FBA reimbursement if Amazon owes you money. You get a report and decide if you want to submit a refund claim. The GETIDA claims team takes it from there. 

It will take longer than 14 days. But it can help you get paid what you are owed. It’s also free to sign up for GETIDA. Even better, you can get $400 in free FBA Reimbursements to try them out.