Amazon puts Prime delivery on merchants’ own shops. US sellers get it first

Amazon said on 24 September that shops using its Multichannel Fulfillment service can now offer Prime delivery on their own websites. The option is open to merchants in the United States and adds no charge on top of standard fulfilment fees.

Shoppers pick Prime at checkout and Amazon checks the membership

The merchant puts a Prime badge on the product page. A shopper who is a Prime member picks Prime as the delivery option. Amazon then checks the membership and ships the order from the seller stock it already holds. The order confirmation and the tracking link still come from the merchant, so the shop keeps the customer.

Multichannel Fulfillment, or MCF, is the service that lets a seller use Amazon warehouses for orders placed away from Amazon. Until now those parcels arrived without the Prime name. That is the part Amazon has changed.

Peter Larsen says sellers want Amazon logistics on every channel

Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Supply Chain Services, said merchants keep repeating one request: they “want to use our logistics everywhere they sell”. The company has been moving that way all week. At the same event it let sellers manage other marketplaces from Seller Central.

Amazon takes 15 to 25 percent off fulfilment fees for six months

Amazon also opened a Preferred Pricing Program. It cuts fulfilment fees by 15 to 25 percent for the first six months. The discount covers orders from a merchant own site, from other marketplaces and from social channels. Amazon says there is no contract and no long commitment.

The company published its own numbers from the test group. More than 40 percent of eligible orders went out with Prime delivery. Amazon says 40 percent of Prime members are more likely to buy for the first time on a site that shows the Prime logo, and 50 percent are more likely to come back. Those figures come from Amazon and nobody outside the company has checked them.

Shopify, Fulfil, LingXing and WebBee carry the integration

Shopify merchants switch it on through the Amazon MCF and Buy with Prime app. Others use the Selling Partner API or work with Fulfil, LingXing or WebBee. Amazon is not the only one pushing its checkout off its own site. This month Shopify put Shop Pay inside Meta Muse.

The badge is live in the United States today and Amazon has named no date for Europe. Shops outside the country still send MCF parcels without the Prime label. The six-month discount and the badge are two separate decisions for anyone planning a fourth-quarter test.