Existing Merchant Center Account - Existing Account Connection

It is imperative to allow your merchants to use their existing Merchant Center account if they choose to. This account has a lot of historic data and can potentially make the onboarding easier (for example, account has been policy approved already).

UX Guidance

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There could be two scenarios in which a merchant already has an existing Merchant Center Account.

Scenario #1. They have one existing account:

Account connected:

Account created and connected:

Scenario #2. They have multiple existing accounts:

Select from drop-down and click "connect":

Account connected:

Account created and connected:

Tech Guidance

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If your merchant already has an existing Merchant Center Account they want to use, follow these steps to successfully use their account:

1. Identifying the Merchant Center account: Use the content API endpoint account.authinfo with the OAuth credentials of the Google Account of the merchant to display the MC account associated with the Merchant’s Google Account.

2. Storing Data: Make sure to store the Merchant sub-account details

3. Existing Not part of your MCA: The MC account will not be a sub-account of your MCA. It is possible for them to be part of a different MCA and still connect to your integration.

4. Account linking: You should use account.link to link your MCA to the merchant’s existing accounts. You will manage the merchant MC account only via the content API using OAuth. Note: More information on account linking (account flagging) can be found here within this guide.

5. Overwriting existing data: We recommend notifying your merchants by connecting their existing Merchant Center account, their product data and existing settings will be overwritten.