I’m excited to announce the latest innovation in our fight against counterfeits: Amazon Transparency, our product serialization solution that effectively eliminates counterfeits, is now interoperable with brands’ own product serialization systems. Interoperability will enable brands that already have their own product serialization on their products or packaging to benefit from Transparency’s protections easier, faster, and without requiring any changes to their existing manufacturing and packaging processes.
We launched Transparency in 2016 as part of our ongoing mission to create the most trusted shopping experience. The key innovation behind Transparency has been a code that is unique to every individual product unit manufactured by a brand. Until now, in order to enroll in Transparency, these codes were represented as unique 2D Data Matrix barcodes that brands applied to the product or packaging of every unit they manufactured. When a product enrolled in Transparency is listed for sale in Amazon’s store, it allows us to verify that the code is authentic before a product is shipped, ensuring only authentic products are delivered to customers. Over time, we added even more benefits for brands using Transparency, including the ability to track specific batches or lots to trace supply chain issues and the ability to provide customers with additional information post-purchase to drive deeper engagement.
Seven years into our journey with Transparency, we are proud of the progress we’ve made. In 2020, more than 10,000 brands were enrolled in Transparency, from Fortune 500 companies and global brands to startups and small businesses in countries around the world. We now have more than 33,000 brands using Amazon Transparency, and we have verified more than 900 million product units across the supply chain, effectively eliminating the threat of counterfeiting and giving customers peace of mind when shopping for these products in Amazon’s store. While we are proud of the progress thus far, we are constantly looking for ways to make it easier for more brands to benefit from Amazon Transparency.
We listened to feedback from brands that said they have already been applying their own unique serial numbers to their products and adding an Amazon-issued Transparency code created additional cost and complexity for their manufacturing operations. Inspired by that feedback, we are excited to launch interoperability for Amazon Transparency, allowing brands to have access to the same Transparency protections using their existing, unique serial numbers. Brands will share the serial numbers for the products they wish to enroll in Transparency, and whenever a unit of that product is sold through Amazon’s store, Amazon will validate the serial number to verify the authenticity of the product—just like we do with the codes we have been issuing on our own.
Interoperability empowers brands to enroll in the program with their own serial numbers, reducing the time to get started and avoiding additional operational complexities. Now, these brands can gain the protective benefits of Transparency as quickly as two weeks after enrollment, without needing to change any existing production processes.
This is an important development for both brands and customers. It makes Transparency more easily accessible for brands to enroll, which in turn, provides more widespread protections for customers, ensuring they receive authentic products when shopping in Amazon’s store.
We began piloting Transparency’s new interoperability features with a small number of brands, including Belkin, Logitech, and Samsung, and we are now pleased to announce it is available to brands that offer their products in Amazon’s stores in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the U.S.
Here is what a few of the brands had to say about Transparency’s new interoperability features.
“Transparency’s compatibility with our existing serial codes is unique. There is no other program out there that allows us to use our existing serial numbers—the ones we use for warranty purposes—and then provides the capability to validate each separate unit shipped as genuine.” – Annie Joe, Head of Global Supply Chain at Logitech
“Belkin is committed to creating the highest quality products for its consumers, ensuring that every Belkin product sold is authentic, fully certified and safe to use. By allowing us to use our own codes with Transparency, Amazon furthers our commitment to protecting our customers in a more responsible way.” – Salim Hijazi, Senior Channel Product Manager at Belkin International
We are proud of the progress and innovations that we have continued to deliver to better protect customers and brands from counterfeits. Interoperability for Amazon Transparency is another big step forward for how we will do that. We look forward to continuing to build on the strong foundation of partnership with brands to eliminate counterfeits worldwide.
