The application process

Application process takes 10-15 minutes if you have the required information readily available. These requirements include:

• US Business Tax ID (SSN not accepted)
• W9 or W8 and EIN Verification Letter from the Department of Treasury that verifies your US business address or place of physical operations
• Planned integration method for your product catalog (bulk upload, API, solution provider)
• Primary product categories, catalog size and related information (e.g. total SKUs you will be selling initially with verified UPC information, and used vs. refurbished etc.)
• Catalog cannot include any products from Walmart’s Prohibited Products Policy
• History of marketplace or ecommerce success

Providing as much information about your business up front will save you time later. If you do have back-and-forth correspondence with Walmart Marketplace to fill any gaps in your application, it’s a good idea to act fast to avoid any delays in the review process.

Registration

Once you’re approved to sell on Walmart.com, the next steps begin. You’ll first receive an email that contains the link to register your business, and the entire process of registration contains six steps, outlined below.

Account creation

First, you’ll establish a username and password to rely on when managing your Walmart Marketplace seller account. Your username will be auto-filled based on the information you provided in your application. You’ll use these credentials to log in to Seller Center, Walmart Marketplace’s portal for seller account management.

Walmart retailer agreement

Next, you’ll review the Walmart retailer agreement, a legal agreement that all Marketplace sellers sign. This document contains terms and conditions that sellers must accept before moving forward.

Company registration

As you get one step closer to making things official, you’ll register your company by entering a display name and a corporate address.

• Display Name: The name that appears to customers
• Corporate Address: The address used

Tax forms

This step consists of filling out a W-9 form for tax purposes. The required fields include your name, address and TIN (Taxpayer Identification Number).

Payment info

Walmart has partnered with Payoneer (Payoneer.com) and Hyperwallet (Hyperwallet.com) to process Marketplace partner payments, and you must register with Payoneer or Hyperwallet to receive your Walmart payments. Please note that only Payoneer is an available option for sellers with W-8ECI tax classification.

Shipping info

This is where you’ll select your shipping pricing model, shipping methods and the regions you’re able to ship to. Default shipping methods include Value, Standard, Expedited and Next Day. After initial setup, you’ll be able to dig deeper into your shipping strategy by using Walmart Marketplace’s customizable Shipping Templates (more on those later).

List, test and go live

The final step of onboarding involves listing your catalog and testing orders before you officially go live. You should set up your top-selling items first and remember that your items will go live once this testing is complete. For this reason, you should use real items with complete information and no indication that these are “test” items. If you have items belonging to multiple categories, provide a couple of items from each category for the initial round of item setup.

All the items added successfully will automatically move to ‘stage’ status, which means that they won’t show up on Walmart.com until you go live.

Then test a few orders by publishing 2-3 items and placing your own test orders (no need to ship these). You’ll simply need to test the following scenarios in the Seller Center: order acknowledgement, order cancellation, order shipping and order refund.

Walmart will complete a final review process and then will release your account to go live. Once you are live, your items are published, transactable within a few hours and searchable in 24-48 hours.

Sound complicated? It can be. If you need expert help from experienced Walmart Marketplace professionals, contact us at Vertical Rail.