How to Open a Walmart Seller Account, and What Walmart Checks First
What you need before you apply, which tax class you fall under, the five onboarding steps and where a Walmart seller application usually gets held up.
Faizan Mughal2026-11-096 min read
Opening a Walmart seller account takes a few minutes. Getting it through verification and ready to sell takes longer, and how much longer depends almost entirely on whether your business details match your records exactly. You sign up with a business email, then work through five onboarding steps in Seller Center: verify your business, choose how you get paid, add your market details, set up fulfilment and build your catalogue.
Walmart describes all of this in its own seller registration guide, last dated 11 February 2026. This article follows that order and adds what the guide leaves you to work out: which documents matter most and where applications stall. If you have not yet decided whether Walmart suits your catalogue at all, start with how selling on Walmart compares with Amazon.
What You Need Before You Sign Up
Walmart lists six things, and it is worth having all of them ready before you begin, because the steps build on each other.
The first is a business tax ID or business license number. Walmart states plainly that a Social Security number is not accepted, so a seller operating under an SSN needs to sort out a business tax ID first. The second is supporting documents that verify your business name and address. The third is a history of marketplace or eCommerce success, which Walmart lists as a requirement without giving a figure for it.
The fourth is products with GTIN or UPC numbers from a GS1 Company Prefix. If yours do not have them yet, license them from GS1 before you apply, because a barcode bought elsewhere may not count. The fifth is a catalogue that complies with Walmart's Prohibited Products Policy, which is worth checking item by item rather than assuming it matches what Amazon allows. The sixth is fulfilment: either Walmart Fulfillment Services or another business-to-consumer warehouse in the United States that can handle returns.
Fulfilment is the requirement that catches overseas sellers. Without a US warehouse able to take returns, Walmart Fulfillment Services is the route to meeting it.
Work Out Your Tax Classification First
Walmart sorts sellers by tax classification, and that decides what you will be asked for. A US seller with an Employer Identification Number and a US country of incorporation is W-9. A seller with an EIN incorporated outside the US is W-8ECI. A seller with no EIN incorporated outside the US is W-8BEN-E, which Walmart supports for a named list of countries.
For a W-9 seller, Walmart says it may ask for additional documents. Those include an IRS EIN verification letter, either LTR 147C or CP 575, and a state-issued document such as a business license, registration certificate, articles of incorporation or a Certificate of Good Standing. Having these as clean PDFs before you start saves the most common stop and restart.
Sellers outside the US provide more. Walmart's guide lists a company PAN card, a GST registration certificate, a certificate of incorporation or articles of association, a utility bill or bank statement, and identity and address details with a business phone number that is not toll free. The exact proof varies by country, so check Walmart's tax classification guide for yours.
The Five Onboarding Steps
Verify your business. You enter your business information, entity type and tax registration, plus a government-issued ID for the applicant or legal representative. Walmart says verification can take anywhere from a few minutes to two business days.
Choose your payout method. Walmart pays through third-party payment processors. You pick one in the Payments section of Seller Center, register on the processor's site, then come back and link it. The options available depend on your country of incorporation.
Add market details. This is your business display name and the customer service email and telephone number shoppers will see. Use contact details somebody actually watches, because Walmart measures how sellers look after customers.
Manage fulfilment. You set your shipping policy, your preferences and your returns policy. You can change the shipping settings later, from the Shipping Profile section of your account page. Note that Walmart Fulfillment Services is chosen after this: you finish onboarding and set up your first item, and then you can assign specific items to it.
Set up your catalogue. You have three routes: a solution provider, a direct API connection, or Seller Center itself, where items go in by match, one at a time or in bulk. Once your items and their inventory are in, Walmart says it can take up to four hours for your account setup to be complete.
Where Applications Get Held Up
The most avoidable problem is a mismatch. Walmart tells sellers that the tax registration must precisely match IRS records or government-issued documents, in order to avoid delays. In our experience of account work, that means checking character for character: a legal name with or without Inc, an abbreviated street, or an old address on one document is enough to send you back a step.
The second is the requirement that has no number attached. Walmart asks for a history of marketplace or eCommerce success and does not say how much. Have your existing store, your marketplace account and a realistic sense of your sales ready to show, since that is the evidence you have.
The third is the catalogue. Identifiers that do not trace back to GS1, and items that fall under the Prohibited Products Policy, tend to surface late, when the account is otherwise ready. Check both before you start rather than after.
After the Account Is Live
Plan your cash around the New Seller Payment Hold. Walmart holds payments for a period after you begin selling, to let you build a sales history, and the length of the hold varies by your country of incorporation. Treat the first weeks as a period in which you are funding stock and fulfilment without those proceeds yet.
There are no setup or monthly fees on Walmart Marketplace. It also offers savings to new sellers, subject to eligibility, and those are worth claiming deliberately: what Walmart's New-Seller Savings are worth and how to claim them goes through the figures and the opt in.
Then keep the account active. An approved account with nothing live is not a safe place to leave things, because Walmart closes inactive seller accounts under its own rule. Once items are up, the work shifts to the listing quality score and to price, which weighs more heavily on Walmart than most Amazon sellers expect.
If you would rather have the catalogue built and the account run for you once it is open, that is what our Walmart marketplace management covers.
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions that come up most often on this subject.
No. Walmart asks for a business tax ID or a business license number and says an SSN is not accepted. A seller trading under an SSN needs a business tax ID before applying.
Walmart says business verification can take from a few minutes to two business days. The time grows when your details do not match your records and you are asked for more documents, which is why it pays to check them first.
Walmart charges no setup or monthly fee. You pay a referral fee when an item sells, and fulfilment costs if you use Walmart Fulfillment Services.
You need either Walmart Fulfillment Services or a business-to-consumer warehouse in the United States with returns capability. A seller based overseas without a US warehouse would use Walmart Fulfillment Services to meet this.
Walmart allows sellers of products with no product ID, such as private label goods or handmade jewelry, to request a GTIN exemption. Otherwise it expects GTIN or UPC numbers from a GS1 Company Prefix.