After years of lobbying, e-commerce company Amazon has added Jamaica to its list of countries accepted for seller registration. This means that Jamaican producers can sign up directly on the Amazon platform to sell their products using Jamaican credentials.

“Before if you wanted to sell on Amazon you would have to be from a country that is approved, which Jamaica was not on that list, so you’d have to partner with somebody in the US or you would have to sell wholesale to someone in the US, “ said Barrington McIntosh, CEO of Jodasa Enterprises Limited. McIntosh, a Jamaican citizen, has been selling on the platform for over a decade with the help of partners in the United States.

“For eleven years I’ve been on there and that was like a crippling thing because you have these producers, they want their products to be seen but they are unable to do that because Amazon just did not approve Jamaica. You’d have to figure out another way,” he added.

But the move isn’t occurring in a vacuum. McIntosh noted that the approval came shortly after eBay came out with a new product offering which allow Jamaicans to receive their money into their bank account in Jamaica. He said that “before it was very difficult.”

Jamaica is now among 188 countries on the approved list including other Caricom countries. A notice on the Amazon website highlighted that ‘to be eligible to sell on Amazon, you need to be resident in one of the following countries, have a valid phone number, and have an internationally chargeable credit card.’

In terms of impact, McIntosh believes that the approval will be monumental for the Jamaican economy, “it’s going to rival tourism, that is how powerful this is, because you’re gonna be earning in US dollars and I say that boldly because I’ve been on the platform for eleven years and I know. We’ve had students who start at $10,000 then turn it into a million-dollar company.”

McIntosh noted that merchants do not have to be registered companies to sign up. He said persons can sign up to sell as individuals. “Usually on Amazon you are regarded as a small business, when you get to 200 sales or US$20,000 for the year Amazon will encourage you to get formal.” he added.

Logistically, merchants will have two options, Amazon Prime, where items will be shipped to Amazon Fulfillment Center. “They will tell you where to send them. Once the product is in the Amazon Fulfillment Centre, they are received and made available for sale online, they handle the shipment, they handle the fulfillment, they handle collecting the money, fraud processing, whatever is required and you get paid every two weeks right back in your Jamaican bank account,” said McIntosh. The other option is merchant fulfillment which is where the seller has to get the product to the customer within a specified period.

“The beautiful thing about it is as easy as you get on you can be suspended just as easy, because they are fanatics about their customer. The experience of the customer must be preserved or they’ll kick you off the platform,” he noted.

To assist merchants with taking advantage of the opportunity to reach billions of new customers, McIntosh said, “I will host a workshop starting on August 5. It will be a 30-day masterclass for Amazon and eBay since both came out with offers for Jamaica.”

In the interim, Jamaicans looking to sell on Amazon will need a Jamaican passport, a local address, ID and banking details, all of which will be verified by the Amazon team.