Amazon Replaces Merchant Tokens With Account IDs for Brand Registry Selling Roles
Amazon changed how Brand Registry Administrators assign selling roles, effective July 29, 2026. Administrators now use Account IDs instead of Merchant Tokens to connect selling partner accounts to a brand and unlock benefits like A+ Content, Stores, and Vine. If you're a Brand Registry Administrator, or you're waiting on a brand to assign you a selling role, this changes the exact information you need to hand over.
Why Amazon Made This Change
The old system had a real limitation. A Merchant Token identifies a single seller account in a single marketplace, which meant a brand Administrator managing sellers across multiple countries had to track a different token for every region a partner operated in. Amazon's own seller forums are full of confusion caused by exactly this: sellers connecting the wrong account because a partner sent a token from their Canada account when the US relationship was the one that actually needed linking.
Account IDs fix that specific problem. Amazon describes them as a single, worldwide identifier, meaning one Account ID now represents a seller across every marketplace they operate in, rather than a different token per region. For Administrators managing brand relationships with resellers or distributors in more than one country, that removes a genuine source of recurring errors.
What Selling Roles Actually Unlock
If you're not already familiar with how this system works, selling roles define the formal relationship between a selling partner account and a brand enrolled in Brand Registry. There are two roles an Administrator can assign. A Brand Representative role goes to internal accounts, employees or accounts directly controlled by the brand, and is automatically applied when the brand owner enrolls using the same account for both Brand Registry and Seller Central. A Reseller role goes to external, third-party sellers who have a legitimate selling agreement with the brand but aren't part of the company itself.
That Reseller role has become considerably more consequential over the past year. As of June 1, 2026, Amazon requires vendors to hold a formally assigned reseller role through Brand Registry before they can create new ASINs for any enrolled brand. Without that role, creating a new listing for a Brand Registry brand is off the table entirely. The role assignment process that now runs through Account IDs isn't a minor administrative detail. It's the gate that determines whether a reseller can list a product at all.
Finding Your Account ID and Account Owner
If you're an Account Owner, your Account ID is available in Seller Central under the gear icon at the top of the page, then Settings, then Manage Accounts. That's the number you'll now provide to a brand Administrator when requesting a selling role, replacing the Merchant Token you'd have shared before July 29.
If you're not sure who the Account Owner is on your own account, check User Permissions and look for whoever is displayed as “Owner” under Account Role. If you can't access User Permissions at all, you'll need to contact your Seller Central Administrator directly and request access, since only the Account Owner or someone with the right permissions can retrieve this information.
What to Actually Do About This
If you're a Brand Registry Administrator managing reseller relationships, update your internal records now. Any documentation, spreadsheets, or onboarding process you use to track authorized sellers likely references Merchant Tokens, and those records need to shift to Account IDs going forward for any new role you assign.
If you're a reseller waiting on a brand to authorize you, don't send your Merchant Token if a brand asks for one after July 29. Pull your Account ID from Manage Accounts instead, and confirm with the brand that they're requesting the right identifier before you hand anything over. Given how central this authorization step has become to basic ASIN creation rights, getting the identifier wrong isn't just an inconvenience. It's the difference between a role assignment that works and one that silently fails, leaving you locked out of listing a brand's products without an obvious explanation for why.
