Summary
You can use the following steps to manage an existing merchant account. This might be your own merchant account, or a client's merchant account.
Manual steps
Here are the ways you can administer a sub-account:
- Administrative user (recommended)
- If you need to use the Merchant Center UI, the merchant can add your Google account as an administrative user for their Merchant Center account.
- Service account (recommended)
- If you don't need the Merchant Center UI, you can authenticate through a service account, then add the service account ID as a user on the merchant's account.
- Full management (not recommended)
We recommend one of the preceding options unless you only need to manage one sub-account.
If the merchant wants you to fully manage their Merchant Center account and you have an MCA, you can do the following:
- Gather the IDs for your MCA and for the merchant's account.
- In the top right menu bar, click the ? question mark > Help center and support > Contact us.
Request to convert the merchant's account to a sub-account of your MCA, and provide the ID of your MCA account and the ID of the merchant's account.
You can contact Google again to undo this process.
Automatic steps
You can use the Content API for Shopping to request, approve, and remove links between your MCA and other Merchant accounts. Here are the steps:
- Use the Content API for Shopping and authenticate as an OAuth2 client.
- Request a link to another Merchant account.
- Ask the merchant to approve the link.
You can also use the Content API for Shopping to list and remove existing links.
Your Shopping solution can present the merchant with a consent screen to give your OAuth2 application access to their merchant account.
This process still requires use of the Google API Console UI.
See Using OAuth for more details and sample code.