Amazon’s Transparency program is all about fighting counterfeits. Selling low-quality or fake products doesn’t just hurt your reputation—it can get your account suspended and leave customers with a bad experience.

Counterfeiting is one of the challenges plaguing the eCommerce industry, and the Amazon marketplace is not an exception. As a brand owner, you need to take measures to protect your brand and products from counterfeiters. In the past years, Amazon has faced severe backlash from the media because of counterfeit products sold through its marketplace.

By joining the Transparency program, you can protect your brand and give customers the confidence that they’re buying the real deal. As of February 2025, more than 47,000 brands have enrolled in Amazon’s Transparency program. The program has verified the authenticity of more than 1.6 billion product units.

What is the Amazon Transparency program?

Amazon’s Transparency Program is a serialization service designed to make sure customers get authentic products – not fakes. Launched in 2017, it helps registered brand owners protect their brands from counterfeiters. As a pilot program, Amazon first tested the program on its own products, and after seeing success, they opened it up to third-party sellers. 

Amazon Transparency is only available in the USA, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, UK, Australia, India, and Japan.

As more third-party sellers continue to see success with the program, Amazon will expand it to even more regions around the world. 

How does the Amazon Transparency Program work?

The transparency program uses a complex labeling system to make sure that only authentic products reach customers.Once you join, Amazon issues you a series of unique T-shaped 2D barcodes to apply to your product packaging. Unlike GTINs (global trade item number) or UPCs – which some sellers find unreliable – these codes are unique to each product.

Before you ship any item to your customers, Amazon scans the Transparency barcode to verify its authenticity. If a product doesn’t pass the authenticity check or doesn’t have a barcode, it’s flagged as a potential counterfeit. 

To make things even easier, Amazon offers a Transparency mobile app that buyers can use to check if a product is genuine. When they scan the code, the app will show a red cross if it’s invalid or a green checkmark if it’s the real deal. 

Beyond just verification, registered brands can also use the Transparency app to share important information about their products to customers, such as manufacturing date, place, expiry date, and other sensitive information. The manufacturing date helps buyers know if the product is still valid and not expired.

Does Transparency work for FBM sellers?

There are two selling options on the Amazon marketplace: self-order-fulfillment through Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) and Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). 

With FBA, Amazon stores your products, then takes care of packaging and shipping them when customers place orders. 

For FBM sellers, things work a little differently. If you’re selling Transparency-enabled products, Amazon requires you to provide unique codes for each item before it can be sold. Amazon guarantees that only authentic products are delivered to customers with this approach. Even though Amazon for your products generates the codes, you, as the seller, must provide the codes for your FBM products before Amazon completes the sale cycle. The transparency codes are applied on each FBM item packaging.

Benefits of the Transparency Program

The program benefits both customers and brands. Here’s why you might want to consider signing up:

#1. Make more Profits

More often than not, counterfeit products are low-quality fakes sold to unsuspecting customers under legitimate brand names. But with the transparency program, counterfeiters will have a much harder time sneaking their products onto the market, as they do not have the unique transparency codes generated for you by Amazon.

Once a person tries to sell your product and cannot provide the unique codes assigned to the product, Amazon will flag the product as fake. That means that Amazon will not ship the product to customers. By getting rid of counterfeiters, your sales and profits will naturally improve.

#2. Protect your at-risk products

Sellers with best-selling products are likely at risk of dealing with counterfeiting. Items like electronics, popular toys, and even watches are prime targets for fake versions. To tarnish your brand image, a black hat seller would be tempted to sell a fake version of these products. But with the Transparency Program, they won’t get very far as they won’t have the unique codes to your products. 

#3. Prevent potential damage posed by counterfeits

The program helps prevent potential damage to your brand from counterfeiters. If customers keep reporting fake products from your brand, Amazon might take down your listing. And the longer your products are off the marketplace, the more money you will lose. Your search ranking could also take a serious hit. That’s because their algorithm looks at past sales performance, and if your listing disappears, so does your sales history. That break in momentum can really hurt your future ranking, making it harder to regain visibility on Amazon marketplace. 

#4. Prevents bad reviews

Customers will be unhappy when they pay for a product and receive a fake one. As a seller, the last thing you want is a bad review about your brand on your product page and social media. If not handled properly, this could ruin your brand image, as most shoppers trust online reviews. But with the Transparency Program in place, your brand is protected. 

Are there any drawbacks?

As with anything, the Transparency program has its drawbacks, including:

#1. Extra Steps in the shipping process

This Amazon program is an extra step that can be time-consuming – especially if you are launching a new product. Since every code is unique, automating the process of applying labels can be tricky and a hassle. 

#2. Not a free service

The transparency program isn’t free – it comes at a cost. 

Right now, applying transparency labels to your products costs between 1-5 cents per label, depending on your order volume. But that’s not your only expense – you’ll also need to cover the cost of printing and applying the labels before shipping your products. 

#3. Eligibility requirements

Like other Amazon opt-in programs, the Transparency Program has a few requirements you’ll need to meet before joining. As a seller, you’ll need to work towards meeting the requirements before applying to join the program.

#4. Transparency is only for your listings

Another major downside of the transparency program is that it only protects your listings, and you’ll need to raise an IP concern if counterfeiters attempt to sell your product outside of your listing. 

How much does the Amazon Transparency program cost?

While Amazon hasn’t been super clear about the exact cost to join the Transparency Program, you can expect to pay anything from $0.01 to $0.05 per barcode. The amount you would pay depends on the number of transparency-enabled units. 

Here’s a general idea of the pricing tiers: 

• Tier 1: Less than 1 million codes: $0.05 per code
• Tier 2: 1 million to 10 million codes: $0.03 per code
• Tier 3: Greater than 10 million codes: $0.01 per code

For example, you can expect to pay about $50 if you have 1,000 units of product in line to be authenticated.

If you sell luxury items or high-priced products, joining the program prevents any loss that would have come from counterfeiters. As your business grows and you add more products, you can gradually expand the Transparency program to accommodate your other products based on your needs and budget.

One more cost to keep in mind is applying the barcode labels on your products/units. You can simplify this by requesting your suppliers or manufacturers to print the label on the products at the manufacturing stage. While this approach will cost more, it will save you time.

If that’s not in the budget, you can always apply the barcodes yourself using the right printers during the packaging process. 

How to enroll in the Amazon Transparency Program?

Enrolling in the Amazon transparency program is pretty simple. But you’ll need to meet a few requirements first: 

• You must apply unique transparency codes to each of your products.
• You must be a legitimate brand owner and show evidence of the same.
• You must display a GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) on all your products. 

Once you’re sure you can meet all the above requirements, here’s how to sign up:

• Go to the Amazon transparency page and click on the “Get Started” button. 
• Fill out the short form that pops up.
• After completing the form, click “Request more information” to get more information from Amazon about your enrollment.
• If your application gets approved, you can choose which products you want to authenticate with Transparency codes.

It’s a good idea to start by enrolling your high-priced items first, instead of trying to enroll everything at once.

Amazon Transparency vs Brand registry

Brand registry and the Transparency Program are two great tools by Amazon to check fraud, prevent counterfeits, and protect both buyers and sellers in their marketplace. While both tools also help sellers maintain their brand credibility, they have their differences. 

By now, you already know that the Transparency Program is all about checking or preventing counterfeit products. 

Let’s talk about what the Amazon brand registry is. The Amazon brand registry is designed to help sellers verify and protect the authenticity of their brands. 

It’s a tool that helps you find and track down unauthorized product pages and violations. You can search the marketplace for product listings or logos that look similar to yours and the program will provide you with everything you need to submit a detailed report.

The eligibility requirements to enroll in the Amazon brand registry program vary by country. But in general, here’s the information you’ll need to provide: 

• A brand name with an active registered trademark.
• The trademark number.
• The names of countries where you manufacture and distribute your brand’s products.
• A list of product categories (for example electronics, sporting goods, or apparel). 

When applying, pay close attention to details like capitalization and punctuation. Your brand name must match the trademark text exactly, or your application will be rejected. 

How does the Transparency App work?

The Transparency app works like every other app used to verify a product’s authenticity or genuineness. 

To use it, customers need to download the Transparency app on their smartphones to verify if the product they purchased from the Amazon marketplace is genuine or not. Once downloaded, you can launch the app to scan the transparency codes printed on inventories. 

For a product that is authentic, the app will display a green check mark, telling you that the transparency code is valid. But if you scan the transparency code using the app, and it pops up a red cross mark, it tells you that the code is invalid and the product is likely to be a counterfeit. 

As an Amazon seller, you should take a step further by adding more unit-level product details in the Transparency app, such as the product’s manufacturing date, plant, and ingredients or materials used to produce the item. 

Transparency barcode requirements

For every product you want to enroll in the Amazon Transparency Program, you’ll need to apply a unique transparency barcode to it. 

Transparency barcodes are different from conventional barcodes, conventional barcodes only indicate a product’s UPC or GTIN, while transparency barcodes contain the following:

• The product ID which can be the product’s SKU, EAN, UPS, or FNSKU. 
• A unique, non-sequential alphanumeric code generated by Amazon.

Transparency barcodes may also contain the product’s manufacturing date, expiry date, ingredients used, and manufacturing plant depending on the seller. 

How to create Transparency codes

Transparency codes are unique to every product listed on Amazon marketplace and are usually generated by Amazon. 

The transparency codes will be applied at the Amazon fulfillment centers if you ship your products to your customers through Amazon FBA. But if you are operating through the Amazon FBM business model, you’ll need to print the transparency codes out from your seller account and label them on each product before shipping to your customers.

Final Thoughts

Product counterfeiting is one of the numerous challenges that retailers and sellers on the Amazon marketplace face. Counterfeiters can hurt your reputation, damage your brand’s image, and cause a severe revenue loss if left uncontrolled. 

The Amazon Transparency Program helps protect your products by ensuring customers receive only genuine items. Since it’s a product serialization service, enrolling means your customers can trust that they’re getting the real deal—boosting their confidence in your brand.

If you’re a brand-registered seller, take a moment to go over the Amazon Transparency Program requirements, so you’ll know what it takes to join. Help Amazon fight against counterfeiters and help the marketplace continue to grow.

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