Amazon Business (B2B on Amazon)
Net terms on Amazon Business mean that an approved business buyer can place an order on your listing and pay Amazon later, usually within 30 days of the invoice, through a feature called Pay by Invoice. Amazon decides which buyers get terms, Amazon issues the invoice, Amazon collects, and Amazon takes the loss if the buyer never pays. You, the seller, are paid either when the buyer settles or by the invoice due date, and you can pay a fee to be paid on your normal schedule instead of waiting.
That is a very different thing from the net 30 a retail buyer will ask you for the first time you sell a case direct. The word is the same. Almost nothing else is.
How Pay by Invoice works from where you sit
Pay by Invoice is on for every seller on the Professional plan. There is no opt-in and no opt-out. When a business customer whose account has been approved for terms buys from you, the order arrives like any other, you or FBA ship it, and the buyer receives an invoice from Amazon with a due date rather than being charged a card.
The difference shows up in your payments dashboard. A Pay by Invoice order is not disbursed in your next settlement. It sits in a separate state, and the funds become available when the buyer pays the invoice or when the invoice reaches its due date, whichever comes first. If the buyer pays on day 9, you are paid on day 9. If they take the full term, you wait the full term. After that, Amazon pays you regardless of whether the buyer ever does. The credit risk is Amazon's, which is the single most valuable part of the arrangement and the part most sellers do not know they have.
If the wait is a problem for cash flow, Amazon offers a paid option to have Pay by Invoice orders disbursed on your regular settlement cycle. The cost is a small share of the order value, taken per order. Whether it is worth it is a cash flow question, not a margin one, and it belongs in the same fee review as the rest of Amazon Business fees for sellers.
What the buyer sees, and why it makes them order more
For the purchasing manager on the other side, Pay by Invoice is the reason Amazon Business feels like a supplier rather than a shop. They get a consolidated invoice, they can route it through their approval system, and they pay from accounts payable instead of a corporate card that someone has to expense. Many organisations, especially schools, hospitals and government departments, are not allowed to buy on a card above a small amount, so terms are not a preference for them. They are the condition of buying at all.
This is why turning on business prices and enrolling in the tax exemption programme matter together. A buyer with terms, an exemption and a clean invoice can put your product on a monthly reorder without asking anyone. The exemption side is covered in tax exemption for sellers, and Amazon's invoices are generated for you on every business order.
What net 30 means when a retailer asks for it
Now the other version. A specialty store agrees to take 24 units of a $24 retail product at $11 each, an order of $264. The buyer asks for net 30. Here is what that sentence contains.
You ship the goods and send your own invoice, dated the day of shipment, due 30 days later. You wait. If the store pays on day 30, good. If they pay on day 45, you chase them. If they pay on day 90, you have financed their inventory for a quarter. If they close, you do not get paid, and the goods are gone. Nobody underwrites the buyer for you; you do it yourself with a credit application, a couple of trade references, and a judgment call.
The number is small on the first order. It stops being small when a distributor takes 40 cases on net 60 and the invoice is $10,000, and the next production run is due before that invoice is. Wholesale brands live with a permanent gap between shipping and being paid, and the gap grows with the channel. They manage it with deposits on first orders, prepayment for new accounts, shorter terms for small stores and longer ones for reliable distributors, credit insurance once the numbers justify it, and occasionally factoring, where a financier advances most of an invoice for a fee.
None of that exists on Amazon Business because Amazon is the one extending the credit. That is the trade. You accept Amazon's fees and Amazon's customer on Amazon Business and in return you never think about receivables. You accept receivables in direct wholesale and in return you keep the fees and own the relationship. The strategic version of that comparison is in Amazon Business versus wholesale.
A side-by-side that matters to cash flow
Put the two versions of the same 24-unit order next to each other.
On Amazon Business with a quantity discount, the buyer pays around $21 a unit, so $504. Amazon takes the referral fee, about $75, and the FBA fees, about $130 for a product this size, leaving $299. If the buyer takes the full term, you see that $299 about 30 days after the order, or sooner for a fee. You never touched an invoice or a credit check.
Direct to the store at $11 a unit, the order is $264. No referral fee, no FBA fee. You pay to ship a case, say $18, and you spent time on the invoice, the certificate and the follow-up. Net is $246, arriving whenever the store pays, with you carrying the risk in between.
The Amazon order nets more on this one order and pays with certainty. The direct order nets less and pays late. Read that again before assuming wholesale is the better deal per unit, because per unit it usually is not. The reason brands do it anyway is that the store's 24 units become 24 a month across 40 stores through one distributor, the buyer relationship belongs to you, and none of it depends on a Buy Box. The Amazon order does not scale that way, because the buyer on Amazon Business is buying to use, not to stock a shelf.
Practical settings for a seller who wants terms to work
A few things keep Pay by Invoice from surprising you.
Watch the payments dashboard for the Pay by Invoice balance separately from your regular unavailable balance, so you know how much is sitting on terms at any time. If that balance climbs to a level that strains inventory purchases, decide whether the paid faster disbursement is cheaper than the alternative financing you would use instead.
Keep your business price and quantity tiers consistent so the invoices a purchasing department sees do not change price month to month. Procurement people hate variance more than they like discounts.
Do not try to contact a Pay by Invoice buyer directly to move them onto your own terms. It breaches the marketplace rules and it is unnecessary. The information you want, which products are ordered on terms repeatedly and in what quantities, is in your order and payment reports already.
What to take from Amazon's terms into your own
The most useful thing Pay by Invoice teaches is what a business buyer expects: a clear invoice, a predictable due date, an exemption applied without argument, and a supplier who does not chase on day 31. When you extend your own terms to a store, copy that. Send the invoice the day the goods ship, put the due date in the subject line, state the tax treatment on the invoice, and have a polite reminder ready for day 31 and a firmer one for day 45.
Start new retail accounts on prepayment or a deposit, move them to net 30 after two clean orders, and keep net 60 for distributors whose credit you have checked. That progression is standard, and buyers expect it.
If you have not yet found the stores and distributors you would extend those terms to, paste your ASIN into WholesalePilot and look at the preview of who would carry the product. The terms conversation comes right after the first yes, and it is a lot easier when you already know the difference between Amazon's version and your own.