Amazon's New DD+7 Policy: What It Means for Your Cash Flow

Amazon rolled out the DD+7 policy on March 12. If you're a seller, this affects your cash flow starting immediately, and if you weren't watching the announcements, you'll feel it in your next payout cycle.

Here's what changed and what to do about it.

What DD+7 actually means

Under the new policy, Amazon holds your funds for seven days after delivery confirmation before releasing them for disbursement. That's seven days from when the customer received the product, not seven days from when you shipped it.

If you sold something on the first of the month and it arrived on the third, you're not eligible to see that money until the tenth at the earliest. Add three to five business days for your bank to process the disbursement, and you're looking at nearly two weeks from sale to cash in the account on a good day.

For sellers running lean and timing restocks or ad spend around disbursements, this hits differently than the old cycle. The old timing was based on order date. The new timing pushes everything later by anywhere from a few days to two weeks depending on shipping speed.

Why Amazon made the change

Officially, Amazon frames DD+7 as a policy that reduces exposure to fraud and returns. In practice, it also improves Amazon's own working capital position. Whether the fraud justification is sufficient to explain the change or not, the outcome is the same for you: cash sits with Amazon longer.

What to do about it

Build a cash cushion.

Even a small buffer makes a huge difference when your payout cycle stretches longer than you planned. If you were running on a two-week cash conversion cycle before, plan for three now. If your restock decisions are cash-constrained, start building the cushion this month, not the month you run out.

If you're FBM, watch your tracking.

Delivery confirmation is the trigger for the seven-day clock. Missing or delayed delivery scans mean your clock hasn't even started. That's a cash flow problem hiding inside a logistics problem. Make sure your carriers are scanning consistently and that lost or unconfirmed deliveries get escalated fast.

Time bank account changes carefully.

If you're planning to update your bank account information on file with Amazon, do it the day after a disbursement lands, not before. Amazon freezes all disbursements for three days any time you make that change. If you time it wrong, you can double the delay.

Model your P&L on the new timing.

If your finance model assumed order-date-plus-fourteen for cash, rebuild it around delivery-date-plus-seven-plus-bank-processing. Some brands will find their working capital assumptions are meaningfully off.

Why we're telling you this in this way

This is exactly the kind of thing that sellers hear about after it's already hurt them. Policies like DD+7 don't get amplified in Amazon news the way rate changes do, but they affect cash flow in a way that can quietly break a business.

The sellers who handle these changes best are the ones who model them out in advance instead of reacting to a smaller-than-expected disbursement.

What to do this week

Model your next 60 days of expected disbursements under the new timing. If the number surprises you, plan the cash buffer now. If you have FBM SKUs, pull your tracking data and confirm delivery confirmation is landing consistently.