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ONDC for a marketplace seller: what it is, what it is not, and why it is built differently
ONDC is not a marketplace with an account and an API key. It is an open network on the Beckn protocol where any buyer app can find your catalogue and send you an order. That changes what a seller's tool has to do, and what it cannot promise.
What is different about it
- There is no account to connect. A seller app registers a subscriber id and a public key with the network registry. There is no OAuth, no token, no per-seller credential.
- Traffic is inbound and asynchronous. A buyer app sends a search; the seller side acknowledges in milliseconds and answers with the catalogue later, as a separate call in the other direction. Nothing is pushed to a marketplace; the catalogue is pulled, per search, by whoever is searching.
- Authentication is a signature, not a secret. Every message in both directions is signed and verified against the registry's keys. There is no shared secret anywhere in the flow.
What that means for a seller
- One catalogue reachable from every buyer app on the network, without onboarding at each one.
- Orders arrive from apps you have never heard of. The operations, picking, packing, shipping, returns and settlement, are the same work as a marketplace order and belong in the same order book.
- The economics are the network's and each buyer app's, not a single marketplace's commission table. Ask the network, not a tool, what a given buyer app charges.
How ezmarketplaces handles it
ONDC is built as a network adapter, not as a thirteenth marketplace connector: inbound endpoints for search, select, init, confirm, status, cancel and update, a signer and verifier, a registry client, and two seams into the rest of the product, one that serves the catalogue and one that receives orders. It runs end to end on the ONDC staging network. Going live is a network subscription step, not a build step, and until it is done this page says staging, not live.
What it is not
It is not a replacement for Amazon or Flipkart; those remain where most demand is. It is not free of logistics or returns; a network order still has to ship and can still come back. And it is not something a seller's tool can promise volume from; demand on the network is whatever the buyer apps bring.