Amazon answered questions about a new wallet it’s rolling out to help merchants who sell internationally. In its initial announcement on July 25th, it said, “This early stage solution gives sellers an easy, hassle-free way to hold, view, and transfer Amazon store proceeds directly to their bank account on their schedule—all within Seller Central, the go-to resource for small businesses that sell on Amazon.”
In an accompanying post on Seller Central, Amazon explained that sellers could hold, view, and disburse any amount of sales proceeds directly to their local bank, and it said sellers with international bank accounts could convert US dollars into one of 19 supported currencies, “with volume-based international transaction fees to convert and transfer funds.”
Some sellers did not realize the new wallet was for those who sold internationally and they wondered if it could lead to faster payouts. Currently Amazon reserves sales proceeds for 7 days after the delivery date and disburses eligible proceeds every 2 weeks.
An Amazon moderator (who at times referred to the new wallet as SW) responded to questions as follows:
“Funds are available in Seller Wallet immediately after the disbursement is completed. SW does not accelerate the disbursement cadence (for example, if sellers receive funds every 14 days now, they will receive such disbursements in SW every 14 days).
“If the SW balance is positive, then sellers can disburse daily, or multiple times per day, from SW accounts.”
That response led one seller to write, “Glad we are spending time and $$$ making it easier for foreign sellers instead of fixing the many known issues.”
The moderator responded to sellers who questioned the relevancy of announcement about the wallet to US sellers, “many of our US sellers also sell internationally, which is why it was categorized as such.”
They added, “while an array of specialized teams are focusing on a wide spectrum of improvements, the SW team is focused on simplifying the global selling experience.”
As we previously reported, the Amazon Seller Wallet is currently available to Amazon.com sellers by invitation only.
