Amazon Identity Verification Failed: The Documents That Actually Work

Amazon had rejected the same document set more than once. Each rejection arrived without saying which document failed, the UK store could not sell while verification stayed open, and the seller was being asked to guess.

We understand how that feels, because there is nothing in the message to work with. It is not a policy violation and there is no appeal to write. It is a form that keeps coming back, and the reasonable response, uploading the documents more carefully, produces the same result.

The thing worth knowing early is that verification is not a judgement about your business. It is a matching exercise. Amazon lines the documents up against each other and against what is typed into the account, and if any two fields disagree the whole set fails without the reply naming which pair.

What Amazon is actually comparing

Amazon's global seller identity, address, and business verification page (Amazon primary) sets out the requirement, and an Amazon moderator has published the document rules in the seller forums (Amazon primary): a government-issued photo identity document, plus a business document or proof of address such as a bank statement.

What the list does not say is that the documents are read together. Four things have to agree, and every rejection we have looked at came down to one of them.

The four ways a document set fails

Formatting. The dullest cause and a common one. Amazon's published upload guidance on the Amazon Pay side (Amazon primary) lists accepted formats as png, tiff, tif, jpg, jpeg and pdf, requires files under 10MB, rules out filenames containing characters such as $, & or #, and asks for the full page rather than a crop.

The forum guidance adds that files must not be password protected or cut off at any edge. Two third-party guides agree colour scans are expected and black and white copies are usually rejected on sight. Reported by Seller Sprite (2026) and Emplicit (2025).

Those same guides disagree on how recent an address document must be, one saying 90 days and the other 180, so we would not publish either as a rule. The safe reading is the most recent statement you can produce.

Address mismatch. The most common cause we see, and the hardest to spot, because both addresses are genuinely yours. The registered address on the certificate, the address typed into the account and the address on the bank statement all have to describe the same place in the same way. A suite number on one and not another is enough, and so is a registered office at an accountant's address while the statement shows a warehouse.

Unsigned or incomplete authorisation. Where the person handling the account is not the person on the registration, Amazon needs proof they are allowed to act. Its upload guidance is specific: a letter of authorisation carries the authorising person's printed full name, signature, business title and government identification number. A letter missing one of those is not weaker, it is a document that does not do its job.

Name mismatch. Robert on the passport and Bob on the bank statement is a fail, and so is a middle initial on one document and not another. Both guides above make the same point: the name has to match exactly rather than obviously.

How to tell which one is yours

Four checks, done on paper rather than in Seller Central, because the mismatch is between documents.

1. Lay every document out together and read only the name line. Reading them one at a time hides the problem, because each looks correct alone. The differences appear when the lines sit side by side.
2. Do the same for the address, character by character. Unit versus suite, abbreviated street types, a missing postcode space. These feel too small to matter and they are what fails the matching.
3. Check the account settings against the documents too. The address typed into Seller Central is part of the comparison, and it is the field nobody thinks to re-read. The path is Settings, then Account Info.
4. Look at whether the person submitting is named on the registration. If not, an authorisation document is required, and its absence explains a rejection that otherwise makes no sense.

What to check before you resubmit

There is a pull towards uploading again immediately, worth resisting, because resubmitting an unchanged set costs days and teaches nothing.

1. Decide which single field you are fixing. A resubmission that changes five things cannot tell you what was wrong, and if it fails you are guessing again.
2. Get the complete document rather than the useful page. Registration certificates often run to several pages, and the page carrying the registered place of business is the one being compared. A single-page extract is a common, invisible failure.
3. Write the cover message before you upload. Short and factual, naming each document and what it proves. Long explanations invite questions and go unread.

Rebuilding the document set

1. Start from the registration document and work outwards. The legal name and address on the certificate become the reference, and everything else, the account settings included, is matched to it.
2. Correct the account settings first if they disagree with the certificate. Documents that contradict the account produce a rejection with no explanation attached.
3. Source an address document carrying the registered address. A bank statement or equivalent, in the entity's name, showing the same address in the same form, most recent available.
4. Build the authorisation properly where one is needed. Printed full name, signature, business title and identification number of the authorising director, matching the registration.
5. Prepare the files to the technical rules before uploading. Colour, full page, uncropped, under the size limit, plain filenames, no password. Correct documents get rejected on this alone, which is an irritating way to lose a week.
6. Escalate to the verification team rather than general support if the reply is a template. This is the part that irritates us most, because a template reply usually means nobody read the submission. Going again with the same evidence and case references works better than softening the request.

What this looked like on a UK account

The account at the top of this post was an India-registered business verifying for Amazon.co.uk, rejected repeatedly with no usable reason given.

Our team audited what had already been submitted rather than starting again, which is how the mismatches surfaced. The GST registration certificate was replaced with the certificate as issued, complete rather than extracted, because the earlier version did not carry what Amazon needed.

The business address was brought into line so the certificate, the account settings and the supporting document all described the same registered address in the same way. The Power of Attorney was rebuilt with the director's details and a proper signature, which the earlier version had been missing. It went in with a short, policy-aligned cover message, escalated to the verification team rather than general support, with specific follow-ups.

Verification was approved within 48 hours of that submission.

We are not presenting 48 hours as a timeline anyone should expect. That case had a clean root cause and a set that could be rebuilt in a day, and what made it fast was that the resubmission answered the exact question the earlier ones had not. If a marketplace launch is waiting on this, our marketplace expansion page covers the sequence around it.

Keeping this from coming back

Verification is re-run when details change, when a new marketplace opens and periodically without warning, so the goal is a set that is always ready.

1. Keep one folder holding the current verified set. Registration certificate, identity document, address document and authorisation letter, in accepted formats and named plainly, so a request is answered the same day rather than the same fortnight.
2. Update the account settings the week the business details change. A registered office correct at the registry and stale in Seller Central is a rejection sitting quietly in the future.
3. Use one written form of the legal name and address everywhere. Bank, registry, Seller Central, invoices. Deciding the exact string once removes the category entirely.
4. Keep the authorisation current when directors change. A letter naming somebody who left reads as a mismatch rather than an omission.

What we would do first if this were our account

Lay the documents out together and read only the name line, then only the address line, character by character. That finds the cause in most of the cases that reach us, and it costs nothing.

Then the account settings, because they are part of the comparison and are the field people forget is in the set. Only after those two is it worth sourcing new documents, since replacing a document that was never the problem adds a week and changes nothing.

If the next submission still returns a template reply, the work becomes escalation and evidence rather than more paperwork, which sits alongside the compliance work our account health management page covers.

We cannot promise a 48-hour approval, and we would be careful with anyone who does, because verification queues are not something any consultant controls. What we can tell you, before you spend anything, is which field in your set is failing and what a resubmission needs to contain. That is what the free, no-obligation audit covers, and if your documents are already correct we will say so rather than sell you a rebuild.

Related guides

• Preparing for the video verification call
• Submitting a compliance document that passes
• GPSR and the EU Responsible Person requirement

Common questions about failed identity verification