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How to Transfer Amazon FBA Business After the Sale: A Detailed Guide

Selling Your Amazon Business

Posted on October 7, 2021
by Benedict Dohmen

If you’re reading this, you probably just sold – or are planning to sell – your Amazon FBA business. The next step? Migration.

So how do you transfer Amazon account to its new owner?

In this article, we’ll walk you through the process of migrating your Amazon FBA account.

Can you transfer the ownership of an Amazon Seller Account?

Transferring your Amazon Seller Account, according to Amazon, isn’t allowed. However, you aren’t selling only your account: you’re actually selling your business, your company, and the seller account is only one part of that business.

The best part is that you don’t have to do the transfer on your own or stress about the details. An experienced Amazon FBA aggregator, such as Benitago, has an acquisition team to guide you through the entire process and help you with the details.

How do you migrate an Amazon FBA Business?

The process of migrating an Amazon FBA business begins immediately after its sale. The first step is to take the listing off the marketplace – this should be done immediately on receipt of the money from the buyer, as per your sales agreement.

The migration process can take anywhere between 4 to 12 weeks, depending on the set-up of the business, the nature of the transfer, and whether both parties have done the requisite groundwork.

The nature of the transfer refers to whether the agreement calls for an account migration or the transfer of individual listings.

Migrating an Amazon Seller Account

1. Notifying Amazon of the sale

Once you’re ready to begin migrating your Amazon FBA account, you and the buyer are required to inform Amazon that the FBA business has been sold. You should also let Amazon know that there will be changes in your respective accounts.

You can notify Amazon via phone call, or via the chat option in Amazon Seller Central, and they will send you an email with all the instructions step-by-step on how and what you need to do to make the transfer as smooth as possible.

If the buyer is an existing Amazon account holder, they will need to inform Amazon of their intention to open a new account.

Approvals of this type typically have a quick turnaround time in the US Amazon marketplace.

2. Changing the details of your FBA account

Once Amazon has approved the aforementioned account changes, you can begin updating your Amazon Seller Central account with the new buyer’s information. This includes the following:

New login information
Phone number
Secondary phone number or authentication app
Email address
Bank account details
Credit card details
Legal entity & EIN or Employer Identification Number (EIN), along with the buyer’s full name and Social Security Number

When making these changes, ensure that you are using the same IP address you’ve used in the past for running your accounts. Don’t allow the changes to be made by someone else – this will trigger fraud alerts on Amazon’s side.

Please note that when dealing with other countries you may consider looking into VAT (value-added tax) because this isn’t transferable and the buyer will have to get their VAT number.

3. Transferring digital assets

Once you’ve transferred the account details to the new owner, you can begin transferring digital assets to their name as well. Some examples of digital assets are:

Subscriptions
Business software accounts
Social media accounts
Trademarks*
Email lists
Push notification lists

*US trademarks may take up to 60 days to be finalized. Secure the receipt after completing the application; this will allow you to continue the process of transferring assets

4. Beginning the inspection period

The inspection period begins upon transfer of ownership of all major revenue-generating assets. It is a 14-day period during which the new owner can verify or ‘inspect’ if the revenue generated is like it was advertised. The inspection period ensures that both parties are happy with the deal.

During this period, the buyer is expected not to make changes to the configuration or details about the asset to prevent miscalculations or wrong judgments. Should the buyer decide to make changes right away, the inspection period stands forfeited – and so does the opportunity to negotiate a refund or back out of the deal.

For this reason it is very important to be sure that you are working with an honest and reliable buyer.

But how do I know if my buyer is reliable? – We got you covered!

We have prepared 3 guides that will help you understand the type of buyer you are dealing with:

Only migrating product listings

In case you only want to sell a part of your business – maybe you are selling one brand or few products – then you need to be upfront with the buyer about this transaction.

The transfer process is very simple if the buyer already has their own Amazon Seller Account. The buyer will only take over the ASINs and list them under their account. As the seller, you will delist the ASINs from your account.

In case the buyer doesn’t have their account, they should open a new account first and then take over the ASINs.

The only thing you should pay attention to is the inventory because Amazon won’t transfer the inventory to the new account. In this case, you have two options:

Time the transfer for when you are almost sold out of your inventory, then arrange for the new inventory to arrive at the new buyer’s storage facility
Keep selling under your account until you run out of inventory.

Why migrate only product listings?

There are few reasons why you might like to migrate only product listings. For example:

You have multiple brands under your Amazon seller account, and want to sell only one of them
The seller account doesn’t have a good Amazon Seller Rank.

In this case, it is better to open a new account because the product you sell is good.

Important information for Amazon Seller Account Migration

As the seller, the onus is on you to maintain the business during the transition period, even if you are not directly receiving any income from sales. As you are technically still the owner of the business at this point, you must exercise due diligence to ensure that there are no operational hiccups once the new seller (i.e. your buyer) takes over.

Key takeaway

Whether you decide to set up your first Amazon FBA exit call or have already made a fortune from selling Amazon accounts, we hope you learned something from our guide on how to transfer your Amazon account to a new owner.

Migrating your Amazon Seller Central account is the most efficient, hassle-free way of transferring your Amazon account once it’s sold. It’s also less labor-intensive than making individual listing transfers, which will require you to create a new account and manually encode the ASIN and PPC details for every product.

A successful Amazon FBA business is characterized by a high-quality product with minimal competition, good margins, and a great business backend. Together with a great listing and a great attitude to sell, you’re sure to get the profitable exit you’ve been dreaming of!

Now it is your turn – do you have a question for the Benitago team? Or maybe you want to start a conversation with like-minded individuals? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below!