Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) is a third-party logistics (3PL) service that enables businesses to leverage Amazon’s fulfillment network and team of experts to pick, pack, ship, and deliver their orders from off-Amazon channels including brand websites, ecommerce marketplaces, and social media stores.
MCF key benefits:
- Provides fast, reliable fulfillment with hundreds of world-class facilities in cities and communities around the globe
- Supports fulfillment across any off-Amazon ecommerce channel.
- Offers developer tools to integrate and automate MCF.
Merchants who are planning to use MCF to fulfill orders from their off-Amazon channels can automate their fulfillment process by connecting their ecommerce or order management system (OMS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) system with MCF using APIs. merchants can either connect directly with MCF or work with a third-party provider, which develops and manages the integration with MCF on the seller’s behalf.
Benefits of connecting with MCF via APIs
- Automation of the order fulfillment process, which has an average “click-to-door speed” of 1.9 days – over 50% faster than other retailers. (Source: NielsenIQ)
- Automatic order creation using available inventory.
- Ability to surface delivery estimates to customers
- Ability to build AI/ML models to generate inventory plans.
- The option to subscribe to notifications and reports to automate business processes.
- Seller Central account in the given marketplace (or Multi-Channel Fulfilment account).
- A developer profile.
- A developer application with required roles to access MCF APIs.
- Application/client credentials.
Amazon Multichannel Fulfillment (MCF) is compatible with a comprehensive suite of Selling Partner APIs (SP-API) that enable developers to programmatically manage the entire fulfillment lifecycle — from listing products and sending inventory to Amazon’s fulfillment network, to creating outbound orders, tracking shipments, and processing returns. The table below organizes these APIs by domain — Product Listings, Inbound Inventory, Order Fulfillment, Inventory Tracking, Reporting, and Notifications — along with their key use cases and direct links to API guides. Use these APIs to integrate MCF capabilities into your ecommerce platform and automate operations such as creating orders with features specific to MCF (e.g., Block AMZL, Blank Box), retrieving fulfillment previews and delivery estimates, monitoring real-time inventory and order status changes, and generating detailed inventory and settlement reports.
| Domain | Description | Key Use Cases | API Guide |
| Product Listings | Create and manage product listings for the SKUs you want to offer through MCF | - Create or update a listing - Retrieve details about a listing - Submit a bulk catalog feed | Listings Items API Feeds API |
| Inbound Inventory | Send inventory to Amazon’s fulfillment network | - Create an inbound shipment - Update inbound plans - Generate transportation and delivery window options | Fulfillment Inbound API |
| Order Fulfillment | Create outbound fulfillment orders for Amazon to pick, pack and ship the order and also manage the orders in terms of tracking and returns. | - Create orders with MCF custom features like Block AMZL - Get fulfillment previews and shipping speeds before creating orders - Retrieve tracking information for a package - Retrieve proof of delivery for delivered package - Cancel an order - Create a return for an order | Fulfiilment Outbound API |
| Inventory Tracking | Retrieve inventory snapshots | - Retrieve a point in time snapshot of inventory states - Retrieve a list of inventory items that are eligible for a specified feature | |
| Reporting | Get reports for various categories such as order fulfillment reports, settlement reports, Tax reports, Inventory reports, analytic reports, performance and feeback reports etc. | - Get detailed inventory ledger report to analyze your inventory movements to and from Amazon fulfilment centers - Get report on all the listings that are active and non-active and analyze their buyability and trigger restocking | |
| Notifications | Get real time notifications for events and automate your business | - Get a notification when the order/package status changes - Get a notification when an order is returned - Get a notification when inventory levels change for an item |
Recommended implementation highlights key MCF features and capabilities that developers can leverage to enhance their fulfillment workflows. These enhancements include: Virtual Bundling, Blank Box shipping, Block AMZL, Hold Orders, Photo on Delivery, Early Tracking, Signature on Delivery, and more. For each feature, the table provides a brief description and outlines proposed changes. Several of these features already have corresponding SP-API documentation and code examples, which are linked directly for quick reference. Use this section as a roadmap to understand which MCF features are available for integration, how they map to specific API operations, and where to find implementation guidance and best practices.
| Feature | Description | API Reference | Countries |
| Fulfillment Preview | Helps you perform a fulfillability check (or a dry run) before creating an actual MCF order. It also helps in getting estimated fees for the fulfillment categorized by shipping speeds. One notable capability is getting a delivery date estimate for the order so that the merchant can confidently display a delivery estimate to the shopper. | https://developer-docs.amazon.com/sp-api/docs/show-preview-details-ship-speeds | All |
| Virtual Bundling | Bundle multiple SKUs together as one combination SKU and sell to shoppers on the website. For orders with bundled items, merchants/developers can break them into single SKU line items while placing MCF orders. | https://developer-docs.amazon.com/sp-api/reference/ createfulfillmentorder | All (separate SKUs) |
| Serial Number Setup | Serial number is a unique barcode number generated by following a regex pattern. The serial number setup allows the seller to keep track of the exact product when shipped to the end shopper. MCF can scan and record the serial numbers both going out and being returned. This also helps to validate the right product when returned by the shopper to MCF or the seller. | https://developer-docs.amazon.com/sp-api/docs/track-order-item-serial-number | All |
| Blank Box | Blank Box allows sellers to ship MCF orders in packaging with no Amazon logos or labels on it. This is ideal for merchants who want to maintain their own brand identity when fulfilling orders from off Amazon channels like Shopify or other ecommerce platforms. The feature can be enabled as a default in Seller Central or specified per order via the API. | https://developer-docs.amazon.com/sp-api/docs/create-orders-with-blank-box-and-block-amzl | All |
| Block AMZL | Block AMZL allows sellers to opt out of Amazon Logistics (AMZL) as a carrier and instead have their MCF orders shipped using an alternative carrier service. This is useful for merchants whose sales channels or customers who prefer delivery experiences that are not Amazon branded. | https://developer-docs.amazon.com/sp-api/docs/create-orders-with-blank-box-and-block-amzl | All |
| Hold Orders | MCF allows merchants to create a fulfillment order in a Hold state, which reserves inventory for up to 14 days without initiating the shipment process. This is especially useful for scenarios like payment verification, fraud and abuse checks, or promise validation before shipping an order.MCF allows merchants to create a fulfillment order in a Hold state, which reserves inventory for up to 14 days without initiating the shipment process. This is especially useful for scenarios like payment verification, fraud and abuse checks, or promise validation before shipping an order. | https://developer-docs.amazon.com/sp-api/docs/create-order-hold-to-shipped | All |
| Photo on Delivery | Photo on Delivery is an MCF feature where the delivery driver captures a photo of the package at the point of delivery as proof that the order was successfully delivered to the customer’s address. This gives merchants and their end customers visual confirmation of delivery, helping to reduce disputes around missing or undelivered packages. Merchants can retrieve this proof of delivery programmatically via API. | https://developer-docs.amazon.com/sp-api/docs/retrieve-proof-of-delivery | All |
| Supply Chain Portal Listings | Lets non-FBA sellers create their product listings in Amazon for fulfillment. It reduces many Amazon selling requirements like brand approvals, ASIN matching, and product ID codes etc. making it easier for merchants to create product catalogs for fulfillment on e-commerce channels. | https://developer-docs.amazon.com/sp-api/docs/listings-items-api | All |
For Supply Chain portal listings, it is important to note that the marketplace ID will be different from the standard marketplace ID for that region. For example, Amazon-selling marketplace_id for US is ATVPDKIKX0DER, while the non-Amazon-selling marketplace_id for US is A2ZV50J4W1RKNI.
