Amazon Disabled Direct Deposits for International Associates

I was waiting to get paid to my pre-paid MasterCard card through Payoneer’s US payment service. But Amazon never sent me the payment. Instead I received an email from them saying they have credited balance to my account for future payments.

So I logged into my associates account and checked my payment method. Direct Deposits option was disappeared. I had it setup for US Payment Service. But it disappeared without even a notification. However I changed it back to “Payment by Check” which needs at least two months of waiting to actually get the cash. It was less than 48 hours with direct deposit. Then I checked some of Amazon’s terms and help pages to find out if they gave a reason for this, but turned out direct deposits was not supposed to be there anyways. It’s possible that it was a bug that has been fixed recently by Amazon. One of payment help page from Amazon clearly states that direct deposits for international associates are not available. I remember reading this page few months earlier. It hasn’t changed since then. Here’s the quote from the page.

If your billing address is outside the United States, and direct deposit is, therefore, unavailable to you, we will waive the $15 fee. There is no processing fee for payment via gift certificate or direct deposit.

This phrase was there all the time. I remember it. Bug or not this is very disappointing news for all associates outside US. This has been discussed several times on Payoneer and Amazon Associates discussion boards. I don’t think there’s much Payoneer can do about this. But I’m glad to hear that they are working on it. I think Amazon did this because tax reporting issues.

I recently had another bad experience with Go Daddy and US Payment Service. Go Daddy asked me to submit tax forms when I tried to setup direct deposit as my payment method. But the forms are for US residents. So I gave up and used PayPal instead. It wasn’t a much of a problem since PayPal and US Payment works perfectly.

Anyways there’s still a hope that Amazon and Payoneer will work again. A topic from Associates discussion board says that someone talked to an affiliate manager at Amazon associates and he said they were working on a way to allow Direct Deposits for those using Payoneer. Here’s the quote,

however a friend of mine who is also using Payoneer called up one of the Amazon affiliate managers and he told her they were working on a way to allow direct deposits for those using Payoneer.

I’m not sure if this actually going to happen. But for now “Ëœcheck’ is the only option for international associates who likes cash.

Edit: As of 9th December 2012, Direct Deposits seems to be re-enabled for international associates. Again no official words from Amazon about it. It still says DDs are not available for international associates. But you can save it as your payment option on your Payment Methods page