Amazon’s New Business Hour Delivery Rate: What Wholesale Resellers Need to Know

Starting September 30, 2026, Amazon is rolling out a new performance metric aimed specifically at B2B orders: the Business Hour Delivery Rate. It only applies to merchant-fulfilled (seller-fulfilled) orders placed through Amazon Business – which matters directly for wholesale buyers who resell through Amazon Business rather than (or alongside) standard retail listings.

What the Business Hour Delivery Rate actually requires

Professional sellers fulfilling their own orders (not FBA) to Amazon Business customers must maintain a Business Hour Delivery Rate of 90% or higher – meaning at least 90% of those shipments need to arrive while the receiving business is actually open, not overnight, before hours, or on a day it’s closed. The requirement is specific to seller-fulfilled Amazon Business orders; standard FBA shipments and regular retail marketplace orders are not affected.

The compliance timeline

The metric takes effect September 30, 2026, with sellers given until October 30, 2026 to bring their rate up to the 90% threshold. Sellers who remain below 90% after that grace period risk having their seller-fulfilled offers deactivated specifically for Amazon Business customers – not a full account suspension, but a real loss of access to B2B buyers on whichever listings fall short.

Why this is harder to control than it sounds

The catch sellers are already raising: delivery timing on a seller-fulfilled order is largely in the hands of the carrier (UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc.), not the seller. A package can leave on time and still arrive at midnight, before a business opens, or over a weekend when the receiving company is closed – all outside the seller’s direct control, yet still counted against this new rate.

What this means if you buy wholesale to resell as a merchant-fulfilled seller

If you’re sourcing wholesale inventory and shipping it yourself to Amazon Business customers rather than routing everything through FBA, this is a metric worth watching closely starting now, not after the October 30 deadline hits. A few practical angles:

• Check whether your Amazon Business orders are currently landing inside business hours. Seller Central should start surfacing this rate in your account health metrics – review it before the deadline rather than after a warning.
• Consider carrier selection and shipping windows more carefully for B2B orders specifically. A carrier or service level with more predictable delivery timing may matter more for Amazon Business shipments than for standard retail ones.
• Weigh moving more B2B-bound inventory to FBA if your seller-fulfilled delivery timing is inconsistent – FBA shipments are explicitly excluded from this requirement. This is also where reliable, consistent wholesale supply matters: inconsistent inbound stock makes it harder to plan an FBA-vs-merchant-fulfilled split with confidence.
• Don’t wait for the October 30 cutoff to check your number. Account-health metrics used for eligibility gates are usually calculated on a trailing window, so a rate that looks fine in early September can still be below 90% by the time the deadline lands if nothing changes.

This is a genuinely new requirement – not a rebrand of an existing metric – so if you haven’t seen it mentioned in Seller Central yet, it’s worth checking your account health dashboard directly rather than assuming it doesn’t apply to you.

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Related reading: Amazon FBA Fee Changes in 2026 | Wholesale Purchasing Payment Terms | How to Avoid Dead Stock in Wholesale Buying

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