Amazon European marketplaces account: one login for ten European stores, a separate one for North America, and order alerts that follow you across both

What the Amazon European marketplaces account covers

Seller Central Europe is one system with many front doors. Whether you log in at sellercentral.amazon.de, sellercentral.amazon.fr, sellercentral.amazon.co.uk or sellercentral-europe.amazon.com, you land in the same account, and a store switcher at the top of the page moves you between countries. Amazon's European selling page lists the stores you reach with it: "Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, Amazon.it, Amazon.es, Amazon.pl, Amazon.nl, Amazon.se, Amazon.com.be and Amazon.ie". Austria has no store of its own; Austrian buyers order on amazon.de.

The account comes with one Professional selling plan. Amazon quotes it as "€39 (excl. VAT) per month + referral fees" for selling across Europe, and the UK pricing page quotes 25 GBP excluding VAT. Referral fees, mostly 8 to 15 percent, are charged per sale and per category, so check Amazon's current fee page for each store before you set prices. Our article on what it costs to sell on Amazon works through an example.

Can I use my US account on Amazon EU?

No. A North America account and a Europe account are separate registrations, each with its own identity verification, bank details, tax information and selling plan. Your amazon.com login will not open Seller Central Europe.

What Amazon offers instead is linking. Once you have registered a Europe account, you can link it to your North America account so that both appear in one store switcher, and Amazon limits what you pay for the two: "if you link global Amazon selling accounts, your monthly fee will be either the equivalent of USD 39.99 per month or the sum of the selling plan fees for each region and country in which you have active listings, whichever is lower."

The same is true in the other direction. Our European account sells nothing on amazon.com. If we wanted to, we would register a North America account, go through verification again with the same company documents, and link it. If you are still deciding where to start, our guide on how to sell on Amazon covers the registration steps per country.

One catalogue, ten stores: listings and translations

Inside the European account you keep one catalogue. A product you list on amazon.de can be offered on amazon.fr or amazon.it without creating it from scratch, and Amazon's European Expansion Accelerator automates the copy: it "creates product offerings, sets prices, configures shipping settings and models, and prepares your products for shipping processing". Each store still shows its own offer, with its own price in the local currency and its own stock figure.

Three things do not copy well on their own:

• Translations. Automatic translations are a starting point, not a listing. Product names, units (millilitres, grams, pack sizes) and instructions need a native reader.
• Compliance. Labels in the local language, packaging registration and product safety rules differ per country. Check them before you switch a store on, not after the first order.
• Prices. Referral fees, FBA fees and VAT rates differ per store, so a price that works on amazon.de can lose money on amazon.se.

VAT, FBA stock and Pan-European FBA

Amazon puts the tax side plainly on its European selling page: if you sell items in an EU country, you will most likely need to register for VAT. Which registrations you need depends mainly on where your stock sits and how much you sell into each country, and that is a question for your accountant, not for a blog.

Stock is where the account stops being unified. You have two ways to serve the EU stores from Amazon's warehouses:

• European Fulfilment Network (EFN). Your stock stays in one country and Amazon ships cross-border to buyers in the others, at EFN fees. Simple, and usually the way to start.
• Pan-European FBA. Amazon spreads your stock over the EU countries you enable. The programme covers "Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Belgium and Ireland", you enable storage in at least two countries, and Amazon is clear about the consequence: "A VAT number is required for each country where goods are stored." In return you pay local FBA fees in those countries instead of cross-border fees.

The United Kingdom sits outside both. Since Brexit, FBA stock for the UK and for the EU is separate: you send one shipment to UK fulfilment centres, with its own customs and VAT treatment, and a separate shipment to the EU. One account, two stock pools. The FBA or FBM decision is also worth making per store; a product that ships FBA in Germany may be better shipped by you to a small store you are testing.

Currencies, payouts and time zones

Each store sells in its own currency: pounds on amazon.co.uk, euros on amazon.de, .fr, .it, .es, .nl, .com.be and .ie, kronor on amazon.se, zloty on amazon.pl; dollars, Canadian dollars and pesos in North America. Amazon accepts payment in all of them and, as its European selling page puts it, pays you in your local currency. If you would rather receive each store's currency as it is, you need a bank account in that currency; compare the conversion terms in Seller Central before you choose.

Payouts follow the usual cycle: by default every 14 days, with a reserve held for recent orders, and the first payout after your account is verified (Seller Central Help, "Disbursements"). In our experience the practical effect of ten stores is not more payouts but longer statements, so keep the settlement reports per store for your bookkeeping.

Time zones are the small thing that trips people up. A selling day on amazon.com ends six to nine hours after a day on amazon.de, and reports follow the store's clock, so compare days per store rather than across them. On your phone the picture is simpler: an order alert arrives when the order arrives, in your local time. If amazon.com wakes you at 3 a.m., set quiet hours; the alert is still delivered, without sound, and the daily counter is right in the morning.

How order alerts work across marketplaces

Amazon's Selling Partner API, the interface every alert app uses, is organised by region, not by store. There are three endpoints: North America for the "Canada, US, Mexico, and Amazon Brazil stores", Europe for "Ireland, Spain, UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Sweden, South Africa, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Amazon India stores", and Far East for "Singapore, Australia, and Amazon Japan stores". One authorisation covers every store in a region, and every order the API returns carries a marketplace id, so an app always knows which store an order came from.

For you this means:

• You connect your European account once, on Amazon's own login page, with the read-only role Inventory and Order Tracking, and all ten European stores are covered, the UK included.
• amazon.com, amazon.ca and amazon.com.mx need a second connection, from your North America account, because it is a separate account on a separate endpoint.
• Each alert names the store. In Agent ChaChing it also shows the amount in that store's currency, with "≈" while the order is Pending and a silent update once Amazon releases the total, and the app keeps a daily counter per marketplace next to the overall total. One sound for all of them. Cha-ching!
• The official Seller app does not do this for FBA orders on any store. An Amazon staff member wrote on the EU Seller Forum: "There are no SMS push notifications for FBA, only for FBM." Our guide to Amazon Seller app notifications goes through what it does send.

Checklist before you switch on another store

1. Stock and VAT: decide where the stock will sit (EFN from one country, or Pan-European FBA) and ask your accountant which registrations follow.
2. Compliance: local-language labels, packaging registration and product safety requirements for that country.
3. Listing: copy the offer, then have the title, bullet points and units checked by a native reader.
4. Price: run the store's referral fee, FBA fee and VAT rate through Amazon's current fee page.
5. Currency: decide whether you want local-currency payouts or a bank account per currency.
6. Alerts: check that the new store shows up in your daily counter after the first order. If your alert app covers the region, there is nothing to add.