What is a TIC provider, and why does Amazon require one for supplements?

What "TIC provider" means

TIC is short for Testing, Inspection and Certification, the industry term for a third-party organization that independently checks a product or facility against a standard and reports the result. For Amazon's dietary-supplement verification, the TIC provider is the party in the middle: not the brand, not the contract manufacturer, and not Amazon itself. It reviews the evidence a seller holds and tells Amazon whether the listing clears verification.

Amazon's own policy documentation sits behind a Seller Central login, so what is publicly verifiable comes from the providers themselves and from trade coverage of the policy. Eurofins and SGS both publish dedicated pages describing themselves as an Amazon-approved provider; industry press covering the policy's rollout named Eurofins, NSF, and UL Solutions as the initial approved organizations, and the provider roster has grown since: SGS's own Amazon-verification page did not exist under that initial list.

What a TIC provider actually reviews

Every provider's public description covers the same two categories of evidence, described in slightly different words:

In short: a current cGMP certificate for the facility that made the product, and a Certificate of Analysis for the product itself, reviewed against the provider's acceptance criteria. What "current" means, and what a reviewer checks on each document, are covered in how long a COA stays valid and how to read a COA.

Why sellers can't submit the documents themselves

The Amazon-approved-provider model exists specifically so that Amazon is not the party evaluating raw lab data from millions of sellers. Eurofins describes the workflow as: a seller selects Eurofins as their provider in Seller Central, testing or document review happens at Eurofins, and Eurofins, not the seller, sends the compliance result to Amazon. SGS describes a parallel path: select SGS in Seller Central, and its team carries the process "from testing to final reporting." Neither provider describes a seller-facing upload to Amazon, and none exists.

Practically, this means the seller's job is upstream of the review: hold a current cGMP certificate and a current COA, hand them to the chosen provider (or commission the provider's own testing), and wait on the provider's determination. Compliant Always does not change this chain. It helps a brand know, before the provider looks, which documents are missing or aged out. See how TIC verification works and what it costs for the process end to end.

The facility certificate vs. the product test

A TIC provider's review draws on two different kinds of document, and it helps to keep them separate before contacting one:

• The cGMP certificate covers the manufacturing facility, not any one product. It is issued by a certifier such as NSF, UL, Eurofins, SGS, or Intertek after an audit of the plant. What this certificate is and how a brand that doesn't manufacture obtains one is covered in what a cGMP certificate is and how to get one.
• The Certificate of Analysis covers one lot of one product, issued by a testing lab, which may or may not be the same organization as the certifier or the TIC provider.

A brand that hands a provider only one of the two, a facility certificate with no product COA, or a COA with no facility certificate on file, gives the reviewer an incomplete picture, which is a common reason verification stalls before it starts.

How to pick a provider

Approved providers compete on turnaround time, price, and whether they can review an existing current COA rather than requiring the brand to commission fresh testing. Every provider's public page describes its own process differently, and Amazon adds and removes providers from the approved list over time, so the roster visible in Seller Central is the one to check before committing. What's publicly documented today, provider by provider, is on the TIC provider comparison.

Whichever provider a brand selects, the underlying documents required are the same. Running the free check against your current COA and cGMP certificate shows what a reviewer would flag before you pay any provider to look.