Amazon Australia: Problems faced by International Sellers

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Amazon Australia hasn’t even launched yet so it’s not really a surprise that enterprising sellers from the UK and around the world are seeing some teething problems getting their accounts set up.

May multichannel vendors haven’t yet launched support for Amazon Australia so uploading products and managing sales in the early days is going to be a somewhat tedious and relatively manual process. We’re also eagerly awaiting new s of Amazon Australia FBA which for those sellers who are serious about selling down under will qualify them for Amazon Prime, remove some shipping headaches and give a real boost to their chances of winning the Amazon ‘Buy Box’.

There is one issue however for which there doesn’t appear to be an easy solution thus far and that is getting paid for your sales. Merchants from the UK who are trying to set their Amazon Australia accounts up have discovered that they will require an Australian Bank Account in order to receive remittances. There is no option to choose a bank account based outside of Australia.

Amazon Australia Bank Details

When you log into Amazon to set up your finance details you’ll discover that for ‘Bank location’ the only option is Australia. There aren’t too many businesses based around the world who are likely to have an existing Australian Bank Account and the businesses who specialise in setting up virtual local bank accounts tell us that although they are planning to add the service they’re not quite ready to launch yet.

If you’re planning to sell on Amazon Australia have you found a solution for banking? If so we’d love to hear how you went about setting up a real or virtual Australian Bank Account.

16 Responses

  1. Re Amazon Austrailia

    Just had this email back from World First ref Austrailian dollar account
    “We expect them to be available in the coming weeks, we are looking to launch them around mid-December providing everything goes well.
    We are recommending clients to retain funds in their Amazon Seller central accounts until we officially launch them.”

  2. Transferwise have a “borderless” account which allows you to open a new currency account in seconds once you are signed up. Most currencies are available, including AUD. It is an Australian bank account with local details.

  3. I’ve worked with World First for a long time and I’ve no doubt they will be the first company to provide a working, fully comprehensive solution to the payments side of things with Amazon AUS. Customer service is excellent and they seem to be leaps ahead of other companies in regards to their accounts capabilities. I’m pretty sure they are already accept pre-registrations for AUD accounts, obviously it’s completely free.

  4. I have been assured by my account manager at WorldFirst that a fully functional account for AUD will be provided in the coming weeks. I cannot fault their support and have always had excellent service since joining WorldFirst for my eCommerce business.

    I have completed their pre-registration on their website for AUD account – go check it out!

  5. I use World First for my US Dollars and they got me Canadian accounts when they said they could. Ive told them ill I want Aussie too so they got me to pre register today.

  6. Sam

    do you have any a recommendation for a bank account to pay French taxes?

    I tried WF but the French taxman (SIEE) says I need an account that allows B2B direct debit which is not available with WF Deutsche Bank account. SIEE says I cannot pay by manual transfer.

    Thx, B

  7. Hi, Bernard,

    I just make monthly payments to the French tax authorities via transferwise, as you get alot better gbp/eur rates than any high street bank offers, I also do the same for the German VAT authorities.

    If not I know that Barclays offer these accounts. Worldfirst and like don’t offer direct payments on there Eur account as they don’t make any money from you underless you transfer into GBP then back into EUR, which is mad, transfer the cash from worldfirst into your gbp acc then transfer it back to the French into EUR’s via transferwise.

  8. As Paul says, Transferwise already have an Australian Dollar offering.

    I’ve been using their Euro account for a couple of months now, love it and wouldn’t hesitate to use it for another currency.

  9. Bernard,

    Its like these countries don’t want to be paid.

    We used to pay the French via Bank Transfer until earlier this year, and then moved to B2B direct Debit (SEPA).

    Here is list i found when looking myself:

    https://www.abe-eba.eu/List-of-Participant-Banks-N=ff2970b8-2fda-4e9a-b931-bb434b401d7e-L=EN.aspx

    We use Lloyds at the moment, however, since we have moved across, whilst the online French portal says we are all up to date, they have yet to collect the monies and its still sat there.

    We have contacted them (via our Tax consultants) and received a reply from the French saying that everything is fine, but the monies are still in my account.

    We are in the process of looking for a Bank in Europe that will cover all our Euro needs, hopefully in Spain as they will only accept payment form a Spanish bank.

    Germany is fine, we can pay them directly from our Euro account we have with Payoneer.

  10. Thank you Lee

    Yes, I can’t help but think why do all these European countries make it so difficult to register and make returns. Surely this is an easy win. And a potential big win with ecommerce so big and growing. Yet I bet there’s huge pressure in every European revenue department to maximise tax take.

  11. What are the tax implications for UK seller wanting to sell in AUS ?

    Its very easy writing articles but helpful information such as tax would be great!

    Thanks

  12. Has anyone managed to successfully upload their inventory file to their new account?

    When we have tried it several times and we get an error telling us that

    “The file’s header is missing or invalid”,

    but we haven’t changed it so cannot fix it. Reported this to Australian CS, but no response.

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