Owing to the coronavirus pandemic, e-commerce giant Amazon is piloting a new system to verify identify of third-party sellers on its platforms via video conferencing. The seller-verification pilot programme is now on in the US, the UK China and Japan and more than 1,000 sellers have attempted to register an account through the pilot experience, reports The Verge, quoting the company.
According to Amazon, it stopped 2.5 million suspected bad actors from publishing their products on its platform in 2019.
“As we practice social distancing, we are testing a process that allows us to validate prospective sellers’ identification via video conferencing. This pilot allows us to connect one-on-one with prospective sellers while making it even more difficult for fraudsters to hide,” said an Amazon spokesperson.
This is how it works.
To vet the sellers, Amazon’s team sets up a video call, then checks that the individual’s ID matches the person and the documents they shared with their application.
The Amazon associates also take help from third-party data sources for additional verification. In addition to video conferencing, Amazon also uses a proprietary machine learning system to vet sellers before they’re allowed online.
