Intro: Most guides to selling on Amazon.ae skip the one decision that actually determines how the rest of your registration goes: whether you're registering as an Amazon Global Selling exporter shipping cross-border from India, or as a UAE-based seller with a local Amazon.ae account. The two routes have almost nothing in common — different registration portal, different documents, and a different answer to the question everyone asks first, which is whether you need a UAE trade licence at all. Most content conflates them. They shouldn't be.
The choice that decides everything else
Route A is Amazon Global Selling: you register through sell.amazon.in as an exporter, ship inventory cross-border — self-managed or via FBA — into Amazon's UAE fulfilment network, and sell on Amazon.ae without ever forming a UAE entity. Route B is registering directly on sell.amazon.ae as a UAE-based seller, which requires a valid UAE commercial trade licence, full stop, whether the business operates from the mainland or a free zone — Amazon's own registration guide states this plainly, with no carve-out for international applicants.
Almost every Indian brand testing UAE demand for the first time wants Route A, precisely because it skips the trade licence, the UAE bank account, and the incorporation timeline. Route B earns its place once volume justifies holding local inventory and a full UAE operating presence — the same trade-off we've laid out in detail for the wider UAE entity-setup decision, and it maps closely onto the cost breakdown of selling into the UAE more generally.
Route A: Amazon Global Selling, step by step
- Get an Importer Exporter Code (IEC) from DGFT. A 10-digit identifier issued against your business PAN — the same one your GST and export paperwork already runs on if you've exported before.
- Get an AD Code from your bank. A 14-digit code your bank issues once the IEC is in place, printed on the bank's own letterhead; customs won't clear an export shipping bill without it.
- File a GST Letter of Undertaking (LUT). This is what lets you export without paying IGST upfront — we've covered the LUT and GST refund mechanics for exporters in full elsewhere, and the same filing covers Amazon Global Selling exports.
- Register at sell.amazon.in as a Global Selling exporter, submitting KYC details and a credit card — no UAE trade licence, no UAE bank account, no local entity required at this stage.
- Choose self-managed shipping or FBA export to move inventory into Amazon's UAE fulfilment centres, then list and go live.
There's a real financial incentive sitting on top of this route right now: Amazon has been running an offer of up to 5% back on a seller's first $950,000 in eligible branded sales into UAE and Saudi Arabia, on top of Professional accounts currently carrying no monthly subscription fee. Incentive terms change without much notice, so verify the current offer on Amazon's own Global Selling page before building it into a launch budget — don't take a number from this article, or any article, as still live by the time you register.
Whichever shipping method Route A uses to get stock into Amazon's UAE fulfilment centres — self-managed freight or Amazon's own FBA export service — someone still has to clear customs on the way in, and that means someone is the Importer of Record for that shipment. Amazon facilitating the marketplace sale afterward doesn't make the customs clearance step disappear; it's a separate piece of the chain, with its own paperwork and its own party legally responsible for it, and it's worth having that answered before the first pallet ships rather than discovering it at the port.
On timelines: the seller-account registration itself is genuinely fast on either route when the documents are already in order — Amazon's own materials describe the account-creation flow as a roughly 15-minute form once IDs, business details and a working card are to hand. What takes longer, and what most first-time sellers underestimate, is everything the form doesn't cover: document verification on Amazon's side, the IEC/AD Code chain if it isn't already in place, and — for Route A specifically — the actual transit and customs clearance time to get stock physically sitting in a UAE fulfilment centre before a listing can go live and sell.
The VAT catch nobody mentions on Route A
Selling without a UAE entity doesn't mean selling without UAE VAT touching the transaction — it means Amazon handles it for you, and that convenience has a real cost. As a non-UAE-resident seller using Amazon's FBA channel, Amazon acts as marketplace facilitator: it deducts UAE VAT from your sale proceeds and remits it to the Federal Tax Authority directly, so you're never separately VAT-registered. The trade-off is that without your own Tax Registration Number, you can't reclaim input VAT on FBA fees, UAE storage costs, or anything else Amazon charges you in the process — VAT gets deducted going out, and none of it comes back. For a brand running thin margins, that's a real number to model, not a footnote.
Route B: registering directly on Amazon.ae
If the plan is a full UAE entity from day one — matching the volume where holding local inventory and a UAE bank account actually pays for itself — registration runs through sell.amazon.ae instead, and the document list is heavier: a valid national or resident ID for the account owner, the business trade licence itself (with the owner's name on it, uploaded as PDF), and, if the point of contact isn't the beneficial owner, a formal letter of authorisation naming them. Amazon's own guide walks the rest of the flow in order: business information (legal name, registration number, address matching your trade licence), seller information (identity verification, including a live photo or short video), billing information, store and product details, then document upload and identity verification before the account goes live.
Once live, a UAE-resident seller on this route has its own separate VAT obligation to track — mandatory registration once turnover crosses AED 375,000 (~$100,000), voluntary below that, and a full VAT registration process worth understanding in detail before it becomes urgent rather than planned — and worth confirming the exact threshold against current FTA guidance before assuming that figure hasn't moved.
The two routes, side by side:
| Route A — Global Selling (cross-border) | Route B — Direct Amazon.ae account | |
|---|---|---|
| UAE trade licence needed | No | Yes — mainland or free zone |
| Registration portal | sell.amazon.in | sell.amazon.ae |
| Key documents | IEC, AD Code, GST LUT | Trade licence, resident/national ID |
| VAT handling | Amazon deducts and remits — no input credit | You register and file directly — input credit available |
| Best fit | Testing demand, early-stage exports | Established UAE volume, local inventory |
Worth deciding before you register
- Confirm your IEC and AD Code are current before starting the Global Selling application — a lapsed or newly-needed IEC adds days you won't get back once you've committed to a launch date.
- Model the FBA and referral fee stack for your category before assuming Route A's lower barrier to entry means lower total cost — the fee structure is the same regardless of which route gets you there. See the full fee breakdown here.
- If you're already committed to a UAE entity for other reasons — VAT registration, a physical presence, other marketplaces — price Route B against Route A honestly rather than defaulting to the cross-border route out of habit.
- Verify current incentive terms directly on Amazon's site before building a specific percentage into your launch-year numbers; these offers move.
Skipping the UAE trade licence doesn't mean skipping UAE VAT — it means Amazon collects it for you, and you lose the right to claim any of it back.
The same route-choice logic shows up everywhere in a UAE launch — noon runs its own no-entity Global Store path alongside a full trade-licence route, and the two marketplaces don't line up perfectly even though the underlying decision is the same. We help brands work out which route actually fits their volume and timeline as part of onboarding, rather than defaulting to whichever route required the least paperwork to start.