亚马逊美国站进入INFORM年度认证季 有卖家称今年审核更难

This article focuses on the ongoing annual INFORM Consumers Act verification on Amazon US, which has seen a notable increase in scrutiny this year. Key takeaways and practical guidance are summarized below:

1. Basic rules: This verification is mandated by the U.S. INFORM Consumers Act that took effect in June 2023, not a new rule introduced by Amazon. Third-party sellers meeting the eligibility criteria—having sold over 200 units of new consumer goods and generated more than $5,000 in revenue in any 12-month period within the past two years—are required to complete the verification once annually.

2. Timelines: Sellers receive a total 20-day window from receiving the notification to complete the process, and must finish verification within 10 calendar days after initiating it. Failure to meet the deadline will result in withheld payments, suspended sales, or even deactivated accounts.

3. Risks and mitigation: This year’s audit requires extremely high consistency in information; even minor discrepancies in address formatting can lead to rejection. Stores that have changed business entities, addresses, or payment accounts face higher risks. Sellers that have not yet received a notification should still monitor official communication channels and prepare in advance.

Amazon US’s 2024 annual INFORM Consumers Act verification brings multiple implications for brands operating in the U.S. market, with key insights outlined below:

1. Tougher compliance requirements reshape channel strategy: Brands selling via third-party channels on Amazon US that meet verification eligibility must complete the annual process. This year’s tightened scrutiny means information mismatches can lead to account deactivation, directly disrupting a brand’s sales operations on the platform. Brands need to upgrade their channel compliance management systems.

2. Special risk alerts: Brands that have recently changed their business entity, adjusted registered addresses, switched payment accounts, or altered operational entities face far higher risks of verification failure than accounts with stable information. A failed verification will impact inventory, revenue collection and brand reputation in the U.S. market.

3. Recommendations for brands: Brands should assign dedicated staff to regularly audit information in Amazon Seller Central, ensure full alignment between submitted documentation and platform records, and reserve sufficient time for the verification process to avoid compliance issues disrupting U.S. market operations.

This year’s annual INFORM Consumers Act verification on Amazon US brings notable new changes. We’ve summarized policy updates, risk alerts and mitigation measures for sellers:

1. Key policy notes: This is a routine annual verification required to implement the already-effective U.S. federal law, not a new platform policy. All third-party sellers meeting the sales volume and revenue thresholds must participate at least once per year.

2. Risk alerts: This year’s verification is significantly more stringent. Even sellers with unchanged core information for years have experienced document rejection and system errors. Accounts that have modified core information face particularly high risks. Sellers only get 10 days to complete verification after initiating it, leaving very little time to resubmit documents after a rejection. Failed verification leads to account suspension and withheld payments.

3. Action steps: Sellers should proactively audit information in Seller Central to ensure full alignment between all platform records and submitted materials, monitor verification prompts in registration emails and the seller backend, and prepare documents in advance to avoid missing deadlines due to last-minute scrambling.

For factories engaged in cross-border e-commerce direct-to-consumer sales, or factories that supply goods to Amazon sellers, this year’s verification brings the following insights and precautions:

1. Compliance requirements for owned stores: For integrated manufacturing-retail factories operating their own Amazon US stores, all stores meeting the verification threshold must complete the annual process as required. Compliance has become a foundational requirement for cross-border market entry; non-compliance results in immediate loss of sales access.

2. Operational risk alerts: If your factory has recently updated corporate registration information or changed payment accounts, you must proactively cross-check information stored in Amazon Seller Central to ensure full alignment between submitted materials and platform records. A failed verification will lead to product delisting and withheld payments, directly disrupting production planning and cash flow.

3. Implications for digital cross-border expansion: As Amazon’s compliance requirements grow increasingly detailed and stringent, factories pursuing direct cross-border e-commerce must build routine compliance management systems, conduct regular audits of platform backend information, and proactively adapt to platform and local regulatory requirements to stably expand in the U.S. market and reduce operational risk.

This year’s annual INFORM Consumers Act verification on Amazon reveals key industry trends and new business opportunities for cross-border e-commerce service providers. Key takeaways are below:

1. Industry trends: U.S. cross-border e-commerce regulation has entered a phase of routine compliance enforcement. Amazon’s implementation of stricter annual verification requirements confirms that industry-wide compliance is the dominant future trend, and demand for professional compliance services among sellers will continue growing.

2. Core pain points of current clients: Common issues sellers face during this verification cycle include verification failure caused by system glitches, rejection for minor information mismatches, prolonged review periods, and insufficient processing time. Many small and medium-sized sellers are unfamiliar with the rules, and often face account suspension and heavy losses due to minor, unintended errors.

3. New business opportunities: Service providers can launch pre-verification checks and end-to-end application services tailored to INFORM requirements, helping sellers organize and cross-verify information in advance to avoid preventable errors. Providers can also send proactive risk alerts to existing clients. This not only solves pressing problems for sellers, but also expands business scope and improves customer retention for service providers.

The issues that emerged during Amazon’s rollout of INFORM Consumers Act verification offer valuable operational and management insights for other cross-border e-commerce platforms. Key takeaways are outlined below:

1. Core merchant needs: Sellers have clear requirements for clear verification processes and system stability. Unclear processes and system glitches cause losses for even fully compliant sellers, trigger merchant dissatisfaction, and damage platform reputation and merchant retention.

2. Operational management insights: When rolling out verification mechanisms to comply with host market regulatory requirements, platforms should proactively communicate rules and timelines to sellers, optimize system information matching logic, and clearly publish detailed review standards such as address formatting requirements, to reduce the rate of verification failure caused by unintentional, non-compliance-related errors.

3. Risk mitigation: Platforms should send proactive alerts to high-risk merchants, reserve sufficient time for processing and document resubmission, and establish dedicated fast-track feedback channels to resolve sellers’ system and review issues promptly, preventing large-scale merchant account disruptions that threaten overall platform ecosystem stability.

This year’s round of annual INFORM Consumers Act verification on Amazon US reflects new developments in the cross-border e-commerce industry and opens new directions for industrial research. Key observations are summarized below:

1. New industry trends: U.S. cross-border e-commerce regulation has completed the transition from legislation to routine enforcement, and the annual verification mechanism under the INFORM Act is now fully operational. This confirms that the world’s major cross-border e-commerce markets are all advancing industry-wide compliance, and the sector has shifted from unregulated high-growth expansion to competition based on compliant operations in a mature, saturated market.

2. Emerging new challenges: When implementing host country regulatory requirements, platforms often face insufficient technical system adaptation and overly stringent review standards. Many compliant small and medium-sized sellers have been penalized for minor errors, which exposes the unresolved tension between aligning with regulatory requirements and protecting seller interests.

3. Future research directions: Further research can explore how regional regulatory policies impact operating costs for cross-border sellers of different scales, identify optimal models for platforms to implement host regulatory requirements, and map out viable adaptation paths for small and medium-sized cross-border sellers to navigate the compliance trend, providing insights for sustainable industry development.