Amazon (AMZN -1.38%) is testing the use of video conferencing to check the veracity of merchants looking to sell products on its platform.
With shelter at home orders impacting companies and millions of people, video conferencing has become the go-to tool to stay connected and collaborate. Now Amazon wants to use it to check the identity of merchants in an effort to clamp down on fraud that has long plagued the eCommerce platform. With fake goods being hawked on the world’s largest eCommerce platform, big brands including Nike (NKE -0.01%) have banned sales of their products on Amazon.
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According to media reports, the tech stock had begun testing video conferencing earlier in the year but moved exclusively to the medium to vet merchants as of February, as social distancing rules started popping up around the world. It has already screened more than 1,000 merchants in China, the U.S., the UK, and Japan. It’s unclear if Amazon will expand the pilot and if it will ultimately be used for all third party sellers wanting to hawk products on its platform.
The tech stock is using Chime video conferencing technology to call would-be merchants. A trained Amazon official checks the seller’s ID to ensure it matches the person on the call and the documents sellers are required to provide as part of the application process. The enhanced scrutiny of merchants could make it more difficult in particular for Chinese sellers who according to Reuters have used fake bills and private networks to register several accounts in the past.
To get in front of counterfeits, last February Amazon announced Project Zero, which is powered by machine learning and automatically scans its platforms to remove suspected counterfeits.
