The news
Amazon (AMZN) said on September 24, 2026 that U.S. merchants using its Multi-Channel Fulfillment service through Amazon Supply Chain Services can now offer fast, free Prime delivery on their own websites at no added cost, extending its logistics network and Prime brand beyond its marketplace.
The announcement came during Amazon Accelerate, its annual seller conference in Seattle, which ran from September 22 to 24. Multi-Channel Fulfillment, or MCF, lets merchants store inventory in Amazon warehouses and ship orders placed anywhere, not just on Amazon.com. Merchants can now show the Prime badge on product pages; Amazon verifies the shopper's Prime membership and fulfills the order, while confirmations and tracking come from the merchant, Amazon said.
Amazon said merchants do not need to change payment processing, order management or store policies, and that setup is more than 70% faster on average than enabling its standalone Buy with Prime service. The feature is available through Amazon's MCF and Buy with Prime app for Shopify and through the Selling Partner API, with integrations from Fulfil, LingXing and WebBee coming.
Amazon also launched an MCF Preferred Pricing Program. It combines MCF discounts with per-unit credits for Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) sellers, cutting fulfillment fees by 15% to 25% for the first six months, with no contracts or long-term commitments and one-click enrollment in Seller Central. Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Supply Chain Services, said the goal is to give merchants deeper discounts the more they ship with Amazon.
Amazon cited early results. More than 40% of eligible orders from early adopters shipped with Prime delivery, and merchants using both MCF and FBA cut out-of-stock rates by 19% on average, the company said. PYMNTS noted that the move follows the May 2026 launch of Amazon Supply Chain Services, which opened Amazon's freight, distribution, fulfillment and parcel shipping to businesses of all sizes.
The numbers
- Fulfillment fee savings (first six months)
- 15% to 25%
- Faster setup vs. standalone Buy with Prime (average, per Amazon)
- More than 70%
- Early-adopter eligible orders shipped with Prime (per Amazon)
- More than 40%
- Average out-of-stock reduction for MCF plus FBA users (per Amazon)
- 19%
- Average inventory turnover improvement (per Amazon)
- 12%
Why CEOs should care
For direct-to-consumer brands and retailers, the offer is simple: borrow Prime's delivery promise on your own storefront without rebuilding checkout. Amazon cites a survey in which 40% of Prime members said they were more likely to make a first purchase from a site showing the Prime logo. Test it on a subset of products and measure conversion and return rates yourself. Before you switch, read the data terms closely. Amazon verifies each shopper's membership and ships each order, so ask what customer and order data it can see and how it may use that data.
For CFOs, treat the pricing as an introductory offer. The 15% to 25% discount lasts six months, so model costs at standard MCF rates for the following years and compare them with your current third-party logistics provider or carrier contracts. The lack of a long-term commitment lowers switching risk now, but moving more inventory into Amazon's network raises dependence later.
For boards, the strategic question is channel concentration. Many brands built their own sites to reduce reliance on Amazon's marketplace. Using Amazon to fulfill and badge those sites brings some of that dependence back through logistics rather than sales. That can be a sound trade for speed and cost, but directors should see it framed as a risk decision, not only an operations upgrade.
The bigger picture
Amazon is turning its internal infrastructure into products it sells to the wider market, much as it did with cloud computing through AWS. At the same Accelerate event, it announced a Selling Partner plugin that brings its Seller Assistant into Amazon Quick and, in a beta for U.S. sellers, into Anthropic's Claude, and it began letting sellers manage Walmart, eBay, Shopify and TikTok Shop sales from Seller Central. The common thread is Amazon positioning itself as the operating layer for merchants wherever they sell, including channels it does not own. PYMNTS described the launch as part of Amazon's broader push to turn its logistics infrastructure into a service for other businesses.
What’s next
Watch for adoption data and for the Selling Partner API and partner integrations to go live. The first six-month discount windows will start to expire in 2027, which will show whether merchants stay at standard rates. Carriers and third-party logistics firms may respond with their own pricing.
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