In May 2021, Amazon fulfilled a long-standing demand of Pakistani businesses by allowing sellers from the country to list their products on its platform. The decision set off a frenzy. “People have gone crazy about selling on Amazon,” Islamabad-based seller Tahir Farooq, who sold goods worth $45 million on Amazon in 2022, told Rest of World. “Pakistanis were actually desperate. They were waiting for this opportunity.”
Within a year of its official launch, Pakistan became the country with the third-highest number of sellers registered on Amazon, behind only the U.S. and China, according to e-commerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse.
But sellers say this boom also created a robust scamming industry where some of them have found innovative ways to dupe customers. These scams have started impacting Amazon sellers across the country. Four Pakistani Amazon sellers told Rest of World that they face rigorous vetting, long delays, and difficulty in opening new accounts on the e-commerce platform, which they attribute to scammers.
“Pakistani IPs are blacklisted,” Ayaz Ali, a Lahore-based seller clocking revenues reaching £60,000 via Amazon through last fall, told Rest of World. “You can create an account, and instantly, it’s blocked or sometimes never approved.” Sellers like Ayaz Ali are worried that the scams could prompt Amazon to discontinue its services in Pakistan altogether. Amazon did not respond to queries sent by Rest of…
