Who Can Act in Your Seller Central in 2026: Employees, Service Providers, Apps and AI Agents
Seller Central user permissions in 2026: employees, service providers on a 365-day clock, SP-API apps, AI agents, the Agent Policy and an annual access audit.
By Bernardo Campelo, Forbes Business Council E-Commerce Leader, Amazon SPN Certified provider, Amazon SP-API authorized partner, and Founder of PrepVia.
As of October 29, 2026, every outside service provider in a US Seller Central account works on a clock. Amazon's October 5 announcement says that as of September 1, 2026, each agency, freelancer or virtual assistant "must complete business verification," that "Authorizations now expire after 365 days," and that the seller chooses "which specific permissions to grant." When a provider has to reauthorize, Amazon emails the seller with "a date to reauthorize by."
That rule is one of four ways someone can act inside your account. Your own employees get users. Outside firms' staff get a Service Provider authorization. Software gets an SP-API app authorization. And since September 23, AI assistants can connect through Amazon's Selling Partner plugin, in beta and rolling out to sellers over time, which has its own control page. Each door sits on a different Seller Central page, with different rules about who can open it and when it closes.
This guide maps the four doors for the people who answer for them: the CFO who owns the bank account on file, the IT and security lead who signs off on vendors, and the head of e-commerce whose agency, 3PL and freelancers already work inside the account. It ends with an annual audit you can run off Amazon's own reauthorization notices, and a vendor questionnaire built on Amazon's Data Protection Policy.
The 60-second version
Four kinds of access reach a Seller Central account, and each one lives on its own page: employees in Manage Employees, outside firms' staff in Manage Services, software in Manage Your Apps, and AI assistants in Manage Agents. Two of them run on a 365-day clock: Service Provider authorizations, since September 1, 2026, and public SP-API apps, which Amazon's developer documentation says must be reauthorized every 365 days. Outside staff are not supposed to become employee users: Amazon says anyone outside your organization comes in through Solution Provider Portal. AI agents fall under Section 19 of the Business Solutions Agreement and the Agent Policy, in effect since March 4, 2026: they must identify themselves and stop when Amazon asks. Use each 365-day notice as the moment to check who has access, which roles they hold and who owns each action.
Every date and name below was checked on October 29, 2026 against Amazon's Seller Central help pages, Seller Forums announcements, the Business Solutions Agreement, the Agent Policy, the Data Protection Policy and the SP-API developer documentation, linked where they first appear. Two of the developer pages were updated on October 28, 2026, and the AI plugin is in beta: check them again before you change a process around them.
Four Doors Into One Seller Central Account
Amazon's help page on authorizing a Service Provider draws the first line: employee access is for "anyone internal to your organization," and Service Provider access is for "Anyone external to your organization." The plugin help page draws the rest, placing Manage Agents "alongside Manage Your Apps and Manage Services." Put together, the map looks like this.
| Who acts | Where you manage it | How access is granted | When it ends |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your employees | Manage Employees (User Permissions) | You invite a user and assign roles | "No expiration (access remains until you remove it)" |
| Agencies, consultants, contractors, 3PLs | Manage Services | Authorization link or Service Provider Network; roles the provider was approved for | 365 days; reauthorize before it expires, or start over with a new authorization |
| Software that calls the SP-API | Manage Your Apps | OAuth consent page in Seller Central | Public apps: reauthorize every 365 days, or when the app adds a role |
| AI assistants (Selling Partner plugin) | Manage Agents | Owner or administrator enables the agent and chooses which users can authorize it | No end date on Amazon's help page; you disconnect it or revoke it in Manage Agents |
The table is the audit. If you cannot name every row that applies to your account, and the person on your side who owns it, that gap is the first finding.
Employees: One Person, One Login
Internal users are the oldest door and the simplest. They are "Added directly in Manage Employees; you assign specific roles," and the access does not expire. That is convenient for staff and a risk for anyone who has left, because nothing closes the door except you.
Amazon also does not support the shared-password habit. In its July 9, 2026 announcement on passkeys for secondary users, Amazon wrote: "For security purposes, we don't support sharing a single sign-in across multiple users." Each person gets a secondary user, invited from Settings, User Permissions, and "The secondary user will need a brand-new email address that has not been used on any Amazon account before." Once registered, each secondary user can create a passkey of their own, which Amazon's October 13 post describes as a way to sign in "with the same fingerprint, face scan, or screen lock you already use on your devices."
The harder rule is about who counts as an employee. Amazon's developer page on role eligibility for service providers, updated October 28, 2026, says: "You can't gain access to seller employee-only roles by being added to a seller's account as an employee or through any other access method." It adds that any access "by someone who is not a direct member of their organization must be established through Solution Provider Portal." Adding a freelancer as a user to skip the provider process is not a route Amazon documents. Amazon's role eligibility page does not list which roles are reserved for employees, so treat any vendor claim about that list with care.
Service Providers: Verified, Scoped and Good for 365 Days
Amazon defines a Service Provider broadly: "any third-party external to your organization that you grant access to your Seller Central account," including "agencies, consultants, external contractors," and businesses offering services such as "advertising management, account optimization, or fulfillment support." If an outside firm's people work inside your Seller Central, this is their door.
The authorization starts in one of two places: a link the provider sends you, or the provider's listing on Service Provider Network, where you choose Authorize Now. From there the steps are the same. You "Review the roles that the Service Provider has been approved for based on their service category," you can "Adjust individual roles or restrict access before confirming," you can "Use the country/region filter to scope access geographically," and you choose Authorize Provider "to grant the Service Provider access for 365 days." Only "the account owner or an account administrator" can do this. If the provider is listed on Service Provider Network, it also has to accept the service request before the authorization goes live.
On the developer side, Amazon's August 19, 2026 release note confirms that "Roles are automatically scoped to your qualified service categories." A provider cannot request roles it was not approved for. You can only narrow what it was approved for, not widen it.
The 365-day clock is where operations get hurt. Amazon's page on reauthorizing a Service Provider says reauthorization "is available when a Service Provider's access is still active and the expiration date is approaching." Miss it, and "The Service Provider's access expires and they can no longer perform actions on your behalf," "Any automated processes or integrations managed by the Service Provider may stop functioning," and "The reauthorization option is no longer available." You start over with a full authorization. For an agency running ads or a contractor running inventory reports, that gap is real downtime.
- Who gets the notice. Amazon sends an email "with instructions and a date to reauthorize by," and keeps a notification in the Action Center on the Seller Central homepage until the task is done.
- Who can act on it. The account owner or an administrator. If that person is out, the date still passes.
- What you can change. Roles and countries, again, every time. Reauthorization is also the point to include roles the provider has since been approved for, if you want them.
Amazon's announcement adds one line worth forwarding to your team: "If you haven't received an email, then no action is required."
SP-API Apps: OAuth Consent and a Second 365-Day Clock
Software is a different door. An app that reads orders, builds inbound shipments or updates listings through the Selling Partner API is not a Service Provider login. Amazon's page on authorizing SP-API applications says public apps use "OAuth 2.0 through Login with Amazon (LWA)," and that the selling partner is the one who authorizes. In Amazon's website authorization workflow, the seller "Signs in to Seller Central and grants permission to your application" on "a consent page within Seller Central."
Apps have their own 365-day rule, and it is older than the September change for providers. Amazon's page on reauthorizing applications says: "For security reasons, the selling partner must reauthorize your public application every 365 days, or anytime you add a role to your application." The seller does this from Manage Your Apps, chooses Re-Authorize and will "Review and accept the data access requested." So an account with an agency and a few connected tools can have two sets of 365-day dates running on two different pages.
What an app can do is set by roles, operation by operation. Amazon's role mappings state that "Each operation requires at least one role from its list of possible roles," except a small set of grantless operations. Two examples show how narrow that is:
- Creating an FBA inbound plan. The
createInboundPlanoperation in the Fulfillment Inbound API v2024-03-20 requires the Amazon Fulfillment role. - Reading Finances transactions. The
listTransactionsoperation in the Finances API v2024-06-19 requires the Finance and Accounting role.
An app built to ship inventory has no reason to hold the role that reads your money. That is the question to ask every vendor, and the consent page and Manage Your Apps are where you check the answer. Amazon's page on revoking authorizations adds that "Only selling partners can revoke OAuth authorizations": the seller goes to Apps and Services, Manage Your Apps, and chooses Disable authorization. For a longer look at how a real API connection differs from a shared password, see what "we integrate" means at a 3PL.
AI Agents: Manage Agents, the Agent Policy and Section 19
The newest door opened at Accelerate. Amazon's September 23, 2026 announcement said the selling partner plugin connects listings, performance and analytics "to Amazon Quick and Anthropic's Claude (both in beta)." The plugin help page lists what it can do, including one line that matters to any operations team: it "Creates an FBA inbound plan and walks through packing, placement, and transportation." Our earlier post on Accelerate 2026 for operators covers the rest of that announcement.
Amazon put three controls around it. "Actions require approval by default: The assistant proposes changes and waits for you to approve before proceeding." You can also "limit the assistant to answers only." And who may connect it is set on the Manage Agents page: "By default, account owners and administrators can authorize the plugin. Secondary users cannot authorize it until you grant them permission." An owner can enable an agent for the account while allowing no secondary user to authorize it.
The responsibility does not move with the tool. The help page says: "You are responsible for all actions taken by the agent, whether or not you directly initiated them." Revoking later "will not reverse prior actions or data access." Amazon's own advice on the same page is to "Grant only the minimum permissions needed for your use case."
Behind the plugin sits a contract rule that covers any software that takes autonomous or semi-autonomous action in your account, not only Amazon's plugin. Amazon announced on February 17, 2026 that, effective March 4, 2026, it was updating the Business Solutions Agreement and "including a new Agent Policy with new requirements for AI usage and automated systems." Section 19 of the Business Solutions Agreement now says that "All Agents must clearly identify themselves as automated systems" and that "Agents are prohibited from accessing Amazon Services if Amazon has explicitly requested cessation of such access."
The Agent Policy defines an Agent as "any software or service that takes autonomous or semi-autonomous action on behalf of, or at the instruction of, any person or entity." It applies if you "use, allow, enable, or cause the deployment of" one. Its four rules, in short:
- Name itself. Every HTTP or HTTPS request carries "Agent/[agent name]" in the user agent string.
- No disguise. No "mimicking the speed or pattern of human keystrokes, page navigation, or other interactions," and no "completing or circumventing CAPTCHAs."
- Answer truthfully. If asked whether it is a human or a computer, it says so.
- No workarounds. It does not circumvent any measure meant to block or limit agents.
Section 4.2 of the same agreement adds a data rule. You "will not, and will not allow any third party to, use any of Our Materials or Amazon Services to directly or indirectly develop or improve large language or multimodal models, machine learning models or related technology," and will not let anyone use "data mining, robots, or similar data gathering and extraction tools" on them. The plugin help page makes a related recommendation: opt out of "making your AI assistant interactions available for training or improving AI models" where your assistant offers the setting. "Allow" is the word a CFO should notice. If a tool you hired breaks these rules in your account, the agreement is yours.
Turn the 365-Day Notices Into an Annual Access Audit
Amazon has handed every seller a reason to review access once a year: the reauthorization email. Treat it as a scheduled control rather than a chore. A workable audit takes one owner and four passes, one per page.
- Manage Employees. One user per person, no shared sign-ins. Remove anyone who has left. Check who holds administrator rights, because administrators can authorize providers and agents.
- Manage Services. List every provider, its expiration date and the roles it holds. At reauthorization, switch off roles the provider no longer uses and narrow countries to where it actually works.
- Manage Your Apps. List every connected app and what it does for you. Disable the ones nobody uses. When an app asks for a new role, ask the vendor why before you accept.
- Manage Agents. Decide which agents are enabled and which users may authorize them. Keep approval before action on. Disconnect agents you no longer use.
Two rules make the audit stick. First, give each provider a business owner on your side who answers the email, so the date does not pass unnoticed. Second, give each action one owner. If the agency, the 3PL, a connected app and an AI assistant can all create an FBA inbound plan, decide which one does, because two parties building plans for the same inventory is how shipments get duplicated.
"Give a 3PL the doors its job needs and keep the bank door shut. If a vendor asks for admin to label your boxes, that tells you what you need to know about the vendor."
Bernardo Campelo, Founder of PrepVia
A Buying Questionnaire Built on the Data Protection Policy
Every app developer and service provider that receives Amazon data through the API is bound by Amazon's Data Protection Policy, which "establishes the requirements for Solution Providers - Developers and Service Providers." Amazon's August 12, 2026 release note says the current version took effect August 25, 2026. You do not have to audit a vendor yourself to use it. You can ask each vendor to answer against it in writing.
The core principle is section 1.3, "Least Privilege Principle": access must be "limited to the minimum necessary to perform authorized functions" and "denied by default and explicitly granted on a “need-to-know” basis." That gives you the first question and the frame for the rest.
| Ask the vendor | What Amazon's policy says |
|---|---|
| Which roles or permissions do you request, and what does each one do for us? | DPP 1.3: access "limited to the minimum necessary to perform authorized functions" |
| Which of your employees can see our data, and how is that access granted? | DPP 1.3: "denied by default and explicitly granted on a “need-to-know” basis" |
| How do you store the credentials and tokens for our account? | August 2026 update: "encrypt all credentials at rest" |
| How long do you keep personal information from our orders? | DPP 2.1: "retain PII for no longer than 30 days after order delivery," for the listed purposes |
| If Amazon tells you to delete our data, how fast does it happen? | DPP: "within 30 days of Amazon's requests" |
| If we revoke your access, how fast do you delete our data? | DPP 1.7: within thirty (30) days after the seller "revokes authorization, terminates, or otherwise removes" access |
| Who is your incident contact if something leaks? | August 2026 update: you must "designate an incident management point of contact" |
| Does any tool you use act on our account on its own, and how does it identify itself? | Agent Policy: "Agent/[agent name]" in the user agent string |
Ask for the answers in the contract, not on a sales call. Our prep center agreement checklist covers where clauses like these belong. If a question touches your legal exposure under the Business Solutions Agreement, take it to your own counsel.
Where a Prep Center Fits
A prep center needs to see what you ship, what Amazon received and whatever else you hire it to run. It does not need your payments, your bank details or your user list. In API terms, inbound work runs on operations like createInboundPlan, which sits under the Amazon Fulfillment role; our guide to the Send to Amazon API workflow walks through those calls in order. When a prep center asks for more than its service needs, ask why.
How the access arrives depends on the provider. An agency or consultant usually comes in through a Service Provider authorization; our post on what an agency can resell explains why the account always stays in the client's name. Software comes in through Manage Your Apps.
PrepVia connects through the app door, the third row in the table above. The PrepVia app is an authorized SP-API application: you connect your account on Amazon's consent page in Seller Central, where you see the access requested, and the connection then appears in Manage Your Apps, where you can disable it yourself. PrepVia is Amazon SPN Certified. On the physical side, it handles receiving and inspection (included), labeling, kitting and case packs, and inbound shipments to Amazon. Discrepancies are reported within 24 hours of arrival, with photos.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I add my agency or freelancer as a user in Seller Central?
Amazon's developer documentation says no. Anyone who is not a direct member of your organization must come in through Solution Provider Portal, and being added as an employee does not unlock employee-only roles. Outside firms whose people work inside Seller Central belong in Manage Services, with a Service Provider authorization. Software they run connects through Manage Your Apps.
How long does a Service Provider authorization last?
365 days. You can reauthorize from Manage Services while the access is still active. If it expires, reauthorization is no longer available and you have to complete a full authorization again, and the provider's automated processes may stop in the meantime.
Do SP-API apps expire too?
Public SP-API apps must be reauthorized every 365 days, or whenever the app adds a role. The seller does it from Manage Your Apps by choosing Re-Authorize and reviewing the data access requested. That clock is separate from the Service Provider clock.
What happens if I don't get a reauthorization email?
Amazon's announcement says: "If you haven't received an email, then no action is required." When a provider does need to reauthorize, the email gives a date, and a notification stays in the Action Center until the task is done.
Can Amazon's AI plugin change my account without asking?
By default, no. Amazon says actions require approval: the assistant proposes a change and waits for you. You can also limit it to answers only. You remain responsible for everything it does, and disconnecting it later does not reverse earlier actions.
What does the Agent Policy require from AI agents and other autonomous tools?
An agent must put "Agent/[agent name]" in the user agent string of every request, must not imitate human behavior or get around CAPTCHAs, must answer truthfully if asked whether it is a computer, and must not circumvent Amazon's limits on agents. Under Section 19 of the Business Solutions Agreement, it must stop when Amazon asks.
How does PrepVia connect to my account?
As an authorized SP-API app. You connect on Amazon's consent page in Seller Central, see the access requested there, and can disable the connection yourself from Manage Your Apps.
Final Take
Seller Central access is no longer one list of users. It is four pages, two of them on 365-day clocks, plus a contract rule for anything that acts on its own. That sounds like more work, but it gives a finance or security lead something they rarely get from a marketplace: a dated, documented moment every year to ask who is in the account and why.
Use it. Give each door an owner, give each vendor only what its job needs, and give each action, especially the inbound plan, one party who does it.
See how the PrepVia app connects →
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