A U.S. address, mail and a phone number

This lesson looks like administrative trivia and is the reason a surprising number of registrations fail. The cause is almost always the same mistake: treating “my address” as one thing. It is four things, and giving the wrong one to the wrong institution is what produces an account under review with no explanation.

The four addresses, and who wants which

Write these down separately. They can be four different places, and for a non-resident seller they usually are.

1. The registered agent address

Covered in lesson 2. It is the address where legal papers can be served on your company, it must be a physical street address in the state of formation, and your registered agent provides it. You do not choose it and you do not receive ordinary business post there. It is on the public record, which is exactly why people who work from home use an agent.

2. The business mailing address

This is the one people mean when they say “a U.S. address”. It is where the tax authority sends letters, where a bank sends a card, where a supplier sends a contract. It needs to be an address where somebody opens the envelope and tells you what is inside.

3. Your residential address

The address where you actually live, in whatever country that is. You cannot substitute a mailbox here, and trying to is the single most common cause of a stalled Amazon registration. Amazon's own registration checklist asks for proof of residential address from the last 180 days, such as a bank or credit card statement, alongside a government-issued ID.¹ That document has to match the person, not the company.

4. The ship-from and return address

Where inventory physically leaves from and where customer returns physically arrive. Under Fulfilment by Amazon this is largely Amazon's problem; if you ship yourself, it is a real warehouse or prep centre. A mailbox cannot receive a returned kettle.

How a mailbox service actually works

A company that rents you a U.S. mailing address is a commercial mail receiving agency, a CMRA, and the arrangement is regulated by the postal service rather than invented by the provider. Three consequences matter to you.

You sign a form, and you sign it in front of someone. Authorising a CMRA to receive your mail requires PS Form 1583. The rules require that the addressee sign, or confirm their signature, in the physical or virtual presence — real-time audio and video — of the CMRA owner or manager.² Good providers run this as a short video call. A provider who tells you no form is needed is not following the rules, and their address is a liability.

Two acceptable forms of identification. The agent must verify your documents and confirm that the address on the form is really yours; the address is treated as verified only if nothing on the identification contradicts the application.² Since a 2023 change to the rules, corporate identification cards and utility bills are no longer accepted for this purpose.³ A passport plus a driving licence is the usual pair.

Your address will contain PMB or a hash. The rules require a CMRA to represent the mailbox with “PMB” (private mailbox) or the alternative “#” in the address, on the line with the street address.² This matters commercially: some banks and payment providers screen for that pattern and treat it as a mailbox rather than a place of business. It is not a trick you can avoid by writing “Suite” instead; misrepresenting a mailbox as a suite is exactly the misstatement an underwriter looks for.

Choosing a provider

Prices and features vary and we are not going to name a winner, because what matters is a short list of questions that eliminates most providers in one email.

1. Do you handle PS Form 1583 with a video call, and is notarisation included or extra? If the answer is vague, stop.
2. Can you scan the contents of an envelope, not just the outside? An image of a sealed envelope from the tax authority is useless to you three time zones away.
3. Will you forward internationally, and at what cost per item? Some documents — a bank card, an original certificate — have to physically travel.
4. Do you accept parcels from couriers, and is there a size or storage limit? Sample products arrive by courier, not by post.
5. How long is mail kept, and what happens if I stop paying? Mail destroyed on the day a subscription lapses is a real policy at some providers.
6. Is the address in a state where I want tax attention? An address alone rarely creates a tax obligation, but it is one more fact on a form, and lesson 5 deals with the consequences.

What Amazon actually asks for

Amazon publishes the checklist for opening a selling account, and it is worth reading before you fill in anything. It lists a government-issued ID, an email address, an internationally chargeable credit card, a bank account and routing number, a business licence or registration, proof of residential address from the last 180 days such as a bank or credit card statement, and tax information. Registration ends with an identity verification step: uploading documents and then either a photo or a video call.¹

Read that list again with the four addresses in mind. The business registration carries your company's address. The residential proof carries yours. They are allowed to be different — that is normal for a non-resident owner — but each document has to be internally consistent, and the name on it has to match the name you typed.

The phone number

You need a number for three separate jobs, and they have different requirements.

Account security. Amazon, your bank and your email provider will send codes to it, and losing that number means losing access at the worst possible moment. This argues for a number tied to a subscription you control and pay for, rather than a free service that can be reclaimed after a period of inactivity.

Talking to suppliers. Some American distributors still call. A U.S. number gets answered more often than an international one.

Public contact. The number on a company registration or on correspondence, which does not have to be the one receiving your security codes, and arguably should not be.

On Google Voice specifically, since everybody suggests it: Google's own documentation states that single-user Google Voice plans are available only in the US, and that setting up a number requires a phone that can receive a text for verification.⁴ Community documentation from Google adds that from 30 January 2026, a newly claimed Voice number cannot send or receive calls or messages until the user completes identity verification.⁵ Treat it as a service for people already inside the U.S. phone system rather than a shortcut for someone abroad.

The dependable alternative is a paid business telephony provider that sells U.S. numbers to companies, bills you monthly, and lets you receive both calls and text messages in a browser. It costs a few dollars a month, it is invoiced to your company, and nobody reclaims it while you are not looking.

Mistakes that stall registrations

• Using the mailbox address as your residential address. Amazon asks for proof of where you live, from the last 180 days. A mailbox cannot produce that.
• Choosing a provider that skips Form 1583. The form and the witnessed signature are required; a provider who skips them has given you an address that can stop working without notice.
• Rewriting PMB as Suite. The postal rules require the PMB or hash designation. Dressing a mailbox up as an office is a misstatement on a financial application.
• Company names that differ by one character between documents. Automated checks do not forgive a missing comma in “LLC”.
• A free phone number for security codes. If it can be reclaimed, it will be, and account recovery goes with it.
• Never testing inbound text messages. Voice working is not evidence that codes arrive.
• Letting the mailbox subscription lapse. Some providers destroy mail immediately. The letter you miss will be the one with a deadline.

Next

Lesson 4 is the bank account: which providers open business accounts for non-residents, what they ask for, how long it takes, and how to pay suppliers without losing a percentage to the exchange rate every time.