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2026-07-10
Week of Jul 6
Week of Jul 6 updates

Pay with x402

AI agents can now pay for orders via x402, joining Tempo and Stripe as a supported rail on MPP. Every 402 challenge on /agent/orders now advertises x402 alongside the others.Need just one rail? Pass an optional ?method= parameter (x402, stripe, or tempo) to return a single 402 challenge — many HTTP clients mishandle the repeated WWW-Authenticate headers a multi-rail 402 returns. Omit it to advertise everything; an unknown value returns 400 with the available methods.

Wire Funding

You can now fund your wallet by wire transfer, with deposits settling same-day (T+0). Find your wire details and memo code in Settings, and each deposit comes with a downloadable receipt.

Carrier Delivery Estimates

Order reads now include an estimated_delivery_date on each tracking_numbers entry, parsed from the carrier’s own estimate (USPS, UPS, FedEx). Amazon Logistics (TBA…) and other direct-delivery shipments now also get Shipped and Delivered checkpoints instead of empty tracking histories.

Improvements

  • Auto top-up hardening: Auto top-up now disables itself after 3 consecutive failed charges (firing a new wallet.auto_topup.disabled webhook), locks per payment method so a slow ACH deposit can’t block a card top-up, and no longer enqueues duplicate top-ups on burst charges.
  • Clearer address errors: invalid_shipping_address now names the specific missing component (e.g. a unit number), and orders missing only a unit number — where Google verified the building — are now accepted.
  • Tracking badge dropdown: The dashboard tracking badge now copies the carrier or Zinc ZPY number and links to the carrier and 17track.

Bug Fixes

  • Transaction status in Billing: Failed top-up attempts in Billing now show a status badge, struck-through amount, and decline reason, instead of looking like successful deposits.
2026-07-03
Week of Jun 29
Week of Jun 29 updates
This week: carrier-independent tracking numbers, an order timeline endpoint, on-demand wallet top-ups, an estimated-delivery webhook, and a redesigned dashboard.

Zinc Tracking Numbers

Every shipment now gets a Zinc-issued ZPY tracking number at creation: one carrier-independent number per shipment, whatever carrier delivers it.
  • Returned as zinc_tracking_number and zinc_tracking_url on order reads and in order.tracking, order.shipped, and order.delivered webhooks
  • Publicly trackable via 17track

Order Timeline

A new GET /orders/{id}/timeline endpoint returns an order’s milestones (created, placed, tracking, shipped, delivered, plus failed and cancelled) as one ordered list, merging placement logs and carrier tracking state. Works on historical orders, no changes required.

Redesigned Dashboard

The dashboard got a consistency pass and clearer structure: top-level pages show your data, Settings is where you configure things.
  • Tracking and Returns pages: New views with stat bands, status filters, and search
  • Billing and Webhooks as data pages: Billing shows balance, deposits, and a filterable transaction history; Webhooks shows the delivery log with success-rate stats
  • Reorganized Settings: One config hub for account, notifications, payments, Connect, webhooks, API keys, and managed accounts
  • Stats at a glance: Every page now leads with a stat band of sparkline cards and period-over-period deltas, so you can see how your account is trending

Improvements

  • On-demand wallet top-up: Orders no longer fail with a 402 when auto top-up is configured. On a shortfall, Zinc charges your saved payment method, rechecks the balance, and only returns a 402 if it still can’t cover the order
  • Estimated delivery webhook: A new order.estimated_delivery_updated webhook fires when a revised delivery ETA is detected for Amazon orders
  • Free-shipping filter: Product search accepts an optional free_shipping param to return only free-shipping items, on both /products/search and the MPP agent variant

Bug Fixes

  • ACH deposits labeled correctly: ACH (us_bank_account) top-ups are no longer mislabeled as card charges; deposit and fee rows now show the real payment type
  • Clearer fulfillment flags: Public PublicRetailer fields renamed: zinc_managedno_account_needed, supports_accountsuse_your_account. The supported field was removed since the public catalog only lists published retailers
2026-06-26
Week of Jun 22
Week of Jun 22 updates
This week is all about visibility into your orders: full carrier tracking timelines on every order read, a persisted webhook delivery log, and a new order.shipped event, plus pay-per-call data endpoints for AI agents.

Carrier Tracking Checkpoints

Order reads now return the full per-scan tracking timeline, so a single call gives you every carrier checkpoint.
  • GET /orders/{id} always returns the complete checkpoints timeline (most recent first) and an authoritative status on each tracking number
  • GET /orders includes status on every tracking number; add ?include=tracking_events to opt into the full checkpoint timeline, so list payloads stay lean by default

Webhook Delivery Log

A new Webhooks dashboard page brings logs and configuration together in one place. Every delivery is now persisted, so you can see exactly what we sent, when, and how your endpoint responded.

order.shipped Webhook

A new order.shipped webhook event fires when an order ships. Pair it with order.placed, order.delivered, and order.cancelled to follow the full order lifecycle without polling.

Data Endpoints for Agents

AI agents can now pull product data from Zinc with per-call MPP payments ($0.01 each), no Zinc API key required. Any request that isn’t paid receives a 402 payment challenge before parameter validation, so discovery probes are never misrouted.
  • GET /agent/search — cross-retailer search (beta)
  • GET /agent/products/search — per-retailer product search
  • GET /agent/products/offers — offers for a product
  • GET /agent/products/details — product details
Payments under $0.50 offer only micropayment-capable methods (crypto / Tempo); card payments aren’t available at that price point.

Improvements

  • Offer controls in CSV bulk upload: is_gift, handling_days_max, condition_in, and condition_not_in now work in CSV bulk uploads, matching the single-order API
  • Richer validation errors: Validation failures now return a typed field_errors breakdown (field, code, message, received, expected)
  • Clearer address rejections: US and Canada state codes are normalized at order creation, with address_validation_reasons explaining why an address was rejected
  • One-click v1 migration: Migrating from v1 now brings your credentials over and backfills 90 days of order history in one step
2026-06-19
Week of June 15
Week of June 15 updates
This week brings two new order constraints, plus Stripe Connect and account-settings improvements.

Order Constraints

Two new ways to control which retailer offer an order is allowed to buy:
  • Filter by conditioncondition_in / condition_not_in restrict purchases to the item conditions you allow or exclude (New, Refurbished, UsedLikeNew, UsedVeryGood, UsedGood, UsedAcceptable)
  • Maximum delivery timemax_shipping_days caps how long an order may take to arrive; Zinc only buys an offer estimated to deliver within that window

Improvements

  • Connect charge on the orderGET /orders/{id} now includes a connect object with the charge breakdown and state, so there’s no separate call (null for wallet orders)
  • Self-service account settings — Change your account email and unlink OAuth sign-in providers (e.g. Google) directly from settings
  • More resilient search/search no longer returns intermittent 502s when our upstream provider is flaky
  • Ordering and tracking — Fixed issues that could leave orders stuck in progress and made polling more tolerant of retailer rate limits
2026-06-12
Week of Jun 8
Week of Jun 8 updates
This week we’re launching Zinc Connect, a new way to have your customers pay for orders directly, plus automatic gift options at checkout.

Zinc Connect

Worried about the cash flow of keeping money in Zinc? With Zinc Connect, your customers can now pay for orders directly through Stripe. Just tell us your margin: we charge your customer, complete the order, and send you your cut in real time via Stripe Connect. A guided onboarding flow gets you set up end to end.

Gift Options at Checkout

Orders are now automatically marked as gifts during checkout when the retailer offers a free “this is a gift” option. We only use the free gift flag, never paid gift wrap or gift messages, so your order totals stay unchanged.

Improvements

  • Rate limit headers — By request, API responses can now include the standard rate limit headers (X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining, X-RateLimit-Reset) so your integration can pace itself
  • v1 to v2 migration assistance — Moving from v1? We can now bring your historical orders, retailer credentials, and webhook URLs over to v2 for you — reach out to support@zinc.com to get started
2026-06-05
Week of Jun 1
Week of Jun 1 updates
This week we’re launching bulk order upload in the dashboard — place an entire spreadsheet of orders in one go.

Bulk Order Upload

You can now place many orders at once by dragging a CSV into the dashboard. Each row is one order — product URLs, quantities, a shipping address, and a max price — and Zinc validates the whole file up front, shows you a preview, and only places orders once you confirm. Every row runs through the same validation, routing, and billing as a single order, so bulk orders behave exactly like the ones you create individually.As the batch runs you get live status for each row, and when it’s done you can download a results CSV with the Zinc order ID, total, and tracking for every order. It’s a faster, self-serve replacement for the legacy email-based file exchange.And keep an eye out next week — we’ve been working on a new way to pay for orders that doesn’t involve pre-funding a wallet. More soon.
2026-05-29
Week of May 25
Week of May 25 updates
This week we’re opening up cross-retailer product search in beta, a redesigned product search experience in the dashboard, and smarter handling of partial cancellations and gift-card orders.

Cross-Retailer Search (Beta)

The new GET /search endpoint returns a single ranked list of buyable products across every supported retailer — Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Costco, eBay, Wayfair, Macy’s, and more — in one call. Each result’s url is the orderable retailer URL, so you can pass it straight to Create order.
/search is in active development and may change before launch. We’d love your feedback — book a 30-minute customer interview to help shape it, and we’ll send you a $50 Amazon gift card as thanks.
The dashboard’s Products page is now a cross-retailer Search experience. Instead of picking one retailer at a time, you search across all of them at once, with results streaming in behind skeleton loading states. New product cards show brand-colored retailer tags and click-to-copy product IDs.

Improvements

  • Partial cancellations — Cancelling a single sub-order no longer cancels the entire order. Cancellations are now handled at the item level with proportional refunds, fixing an over-refunding issue
  • Gift-card orders — Orders fully covered by a gift card or store credit (a $0.00 total) are no longer blocked by the max-price safety check, so they process correctly
2026-05-22
Week of May 18
Week of May 18 updates
This week we’re shipping fiat payments for AI agents via the Machine Payments Protocol, return lifecycle webhooks, and USPS tracking.

Fiat Payments for Agents

Agents paying for orders via the Machine Payments Protocol can now settle in USD using Stripe Payment Tokens (SPT) — no stablecoins, no crypto wallet required. When MPP launched in March agents had to pay in stablecoins on Tempo; with SPT, any agent that can hold a Stripe payment method can place orders on Zinc using regular fiat.

Return Lifecycle Webhooks

Four new webhook events cover the full return lifecycle — return.created, return.approved, return.denied, and return.credited — so you can react to return status changes without polling. Each payload includes a new return_id field alongside order_id, making it easy to route events to the right return.

USPS Tracking

USPS joins FedEx, UPS, and our existing carriers as a directly-polled tracking source. Orders shipped via USPS now get the same accurate checkpoints, faster delivery confirmations, and full delivery history as everything else.

Improvements

  • Returns in sandbox — The returns API now routes through sandbox in test mode, so you can exercise the full return flow without touching production
2026-05-15
Week of May 11
Week of May 11 updates
This week we’re shipping a new order.cancelled webhook event, a meaningful round of improvements to returns, and reliability fixes across the ordering and wallet flows.

order.cancelled Webhook

A new order.cancelled webhook event fires when a retailer cancels an order after placement. The payload includes the cancellation reason and source so you can react without polling — your wallet is refunded automatically at the same time.

Returns Improvements

Building on the returns API and dashboard we launched in March, returns now feel like a complete workflow:
  • Resolution notes — When a return is closed, the notes from our review are now visible on the return
  • Filter orders by return status — The orders dashboard now lets you filter by open or closed returns for at-a-glance visibility

Improvements

  • Faster retailer-cancellation detection — Retailer-side cancellations are now detected and refunded more quickly
  • Wallet top-up safeguards — Additional protections around concurrent top-up requests
  • Pre-placement balance check — Wallet balance is now verified against the retailer’s final total (including tax and shipping) before the order is placed
2026-05-08
Week of May 4
Week of May 4 updates
This week we’re launching FedEx and UPS tracking, a new order.delivered webhook event, and a redesigned status page.

FedEx and UPS Tracking

Zinc now polls FedEx and UPS directly for delivery status, alongside our existing carrier coverage. You’ll see more accurate checkpoints, faster delivery confirmations, and a full delivery history for every shipment.

order.delivered Webhook

A new order.delivered webhook event fires when every package on an order has been delivered. Pair it with order.placed and order.failed to close the loop on an order without polling.

Status Page

The new status page gives you an at-a-glance view of platform health across five service tiers — Ordering, Tracking, Product Data, API, and Dashboard — with 90 days of history for each. Every tier is rolled up from real production health checks, so what you see is what we’re seeing.

Improvements

  • Per-item delivery status — The orders dashboard now shows delivery status for each line item (delivered, shipped, ordered, processing, cancelled), so partial shipments are easier to track at a glance
2026-05-01
Week of Apr 27
Week of Apr 27 updates
A lighter week of feature work, focused on durability and scale. Order volume has grown a lot over the past few months, and we want Zinc to feel rock-solid at any size — so this week is about hardening the ordering pipeline and dashboard to be more resilient under that demand, with fewer transient failures and faster recovery when something does go wrong.

Ordering Reliability

A handful of improvements to our ordering pipeline to keep success rates high as volume grows:
  • Faster tracking updates — Order tracking is now polled hourly for up to 14 days after placement, so status changes land in your dashboard sooner
  • Smarter retries — Transient retailer errors now retry with unique trial IDs to avoid duplicate-detection conflicts
  • More precise error mapping — Out-of-stock products now surface as product_unavailable instead of a generic failure, with clearer messaging across the board

Improvements

  • Full order history — The orders dashboard now shows your complete order history with infinite scroll pagination, instead of being capped at the 50 most recent orders
  • Passkey warning — A reminder to disable passkeys on retailer accounts is now shown when adding or editing a managed account
2026-04-24
Week of Apr 20
Week of Apr 20 updates
This week we’re launching a redesigned billing page and automatic wallet credits from bank transfers.

Billing Page

The new billing page gives you a complete picture of your spending and deposits in one place:
  • Per-order cost breakdown — Product cost and Zinc fee broken out for every order
  • Deposit history — Every deposit with a direct link to its Stripe-hosted receipt for easier accounting

Automatic Wallet Credits from Bank Transfers

ACH and wire transfers to your virtual Stripe account now credit your Zinc wallet automatically. No more emailing support to top up — send the transfer and your balance updates as soon as it arrives. Reversals are handled too.

Improvements

  • Retailer-initiated cancellations — Orders cancelled by the retailer are now tracked under their own status and automatically requeued for a fresh attempt when we detect a cancellation email
  • Full tracking numbers — Tracking numbers in the dashboard are no longer truncated at 12 characters
  • Consistent timestamps — All timestamps in the dashboard now render in your browser’s timezone with consistent formatting
2026-04-17
Week of Apr 13
Week of Apr 13 updates
This week we’re launching Teams — a shared view of orders across your teammates — plus email deliverability improvements and a faster orders dashboard.

Teams

If your team places orders through Zinc, you can now see every teammate’s orders in a single shared view, so you don’t have to hop between accounts to find an order someone else placed.
Teams is rolling out gradually. To get set up, reach out to support@zinc.com and we’ll create your organization and invite your teammates.

Email Improvements

We’ve made order emails more useful:
  • Price breakdowns in receipts — Order emails now include subtotal, shipping, tax, and total
  • Order placement emails are now opt-in — Disabled by default due to deliverability issues; you can turn them back on from your email notification preferences

Improvements

  • Faster orders dashboard — Added pagination and tuned backend queries so the orders page stays snappy no matter how many orders you’ve placed
  • More reliable sign-in — Fixed an issue where transient auth provider timeouts could briefly strip admin access; sessions now fall back to cached roles when the provider is slow
2026-04-10
Week of Apr 6
Week of Apr 6 updates
This week we’re launching Amazon Prime support, plus email notification preferences and payment reliability improvements.

Amazon Prime Support

Zinc now supports Prime shipping on Amazon orders. If you’re interested in enabling this for your account, reach out to support@zinc.com.

Email Notification Preferences

You can now customize which email notifications you receive — including order placed and order failed alerts — directly from the dashboard settings.

Improvements

  • Duplicate transaction prevention — Resolved a rare issue that could cause duplicate charges during payment processing
  • Tracking improvements — Better tracking number selection, with added support for znlogic tracking links
2026-04-03
Week of Mar 30
Week of Mar 30 updates
With returns and product data now available in v2, Zinc has reached full feature parity with the legacy v1 API. If you’re still on v1, now’s the time to migrate — v2 is the future.

Return Request API

Zinc now supports returns through a new set of API endpoints. Create return requests, list them, and check their status — all programmatically.Returns can also be managed from the new Return Management section in the dashboard.

Product Data API

New product data endpoints are now available under /products, giving you programmatic access to product search, offers, and details.

Improvements

  • Timezone handling — dates in the dashboard now display in your local timezone
2026-03-27
Week of Mar 23
Week of Mar 23 updates
This week we’re launching support for the Machine Payments Protocol — enabling AI agents to pay for Zinc orders per-transaction, with no accounts or API keys required.

Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)

Zinc now supports the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) — an open standard for machine-to-machine payments over HTTP. Instead of requiring API keys, subscriptions, or upfront enrollment, MPP lets AI agents pay for each order individually as part of the same HTTP request that places it.Here’s how it works: an agent calls Zinc’s order endpoint, receives an HTTP 402 payment challenge, fulfills the payment, and gets the order confirmation back — all in a single exchange. No checkout forms, no stored credentials, no human in the loop.
  • Stablecoin payments via Tempo — Agents can pay per-transaction using stablecoins on Tempo, with fast settlement and predictable costs
  • Stripe Payment Tokens — Support for Stripe-based fiat payments via SPT coming soon
  • Automatic refunds — If an order fails, the payment is automatically refunded
  • Partial refunds — When the final order price is less than the agent’s max_price, the difference is refunded
Try it out in the Agent Playground, or check out the MPP guide and create order endpoint to get started.
Zinc Agent Playground — let your agents buy anything online

Bug Fixes

  • Legacy v1 API fix — Resolved an issue where quantity was hardcoded to 1 in legacy v1 API order requests
2026-03-20
Week of Mar 16
Week of Mar 16 updates
This week brings API key rotation, expanded retailer information, and improved order reliability — plus a preview of what’s coming next.

Coming Soon: Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)

We’re building native support for the Machine Payments Protocol — a fully-agentic purchasing protocol that lets AI agents pay for orders programmatically. MPP support will go live early next week with Tempo and Stripe as payment methods, starting with Amazon and Zinc retailers. Stay tuned.

API Key Rotation

You can now rotate your API keys directly from the credentials dashboard. Key rotation lets you cycle credentials without downtime — generate a new key, migrate your integrations, then revoke the old one.

Expanded Retailer Information

The retailer status API now includes a supported_countries field, making it easier to programmatically check which countries each retailer can ship to.

Improvements

  • Merchant order IDs in order resultsmerchant_order_id is now included in order responses for easier cross-referencing with retailer records
  • Smarter order retries — Retried orders now correctly preserve variant information, retailer credentials, PO numbers, and metadata from the original order
  • Webhook reliability — Fixed sandbox webhook processing issues
  • Better international address autocomplete — Improved address suggestions for international orders
  • More accurate order pricing — Better extraction of order price details when payment currency differs from the listing currency
2026-03-13
Week of Mar 9
Week of Mar 9 updates
This week brings Great Britain shipping, smarter international currency handling, estimated delivery dates, and improved order reliability.

Great Britain Shipping

Zinc now supports shipping to Great Britain, continuing our expansion of international address coverage. GB addresses are fully validated during order creation.

International Currency Support

Orders placed on international retailers now automatically handle foreign currency conversion. Non-USD order totals are converted to USD at charge time with a configurable FX markup (3% default) applied to conversion rates as a buffer against exchange rate fluctuations. This means you can place orders on retailers in EUR, AUD, GBP, and other currencies without worrying about currency handling — Zinc takes care of it.

Estimated Delivery Dates

When provided by the retailer, estimated delivery dates are now included in your order details.

Improvements

  • More reliable merchant order IDs — Fixed handling of edge cases where merchant order IDs aren’t immediately available after checkout
  • Enhanced error handling — More resilient parsing and retry logic for smoother order completion
2026-03-06
Week of Mar 2
Week of Mar 2 updates
This week brings Home Depot support, estimated delivery dates, international currency handling, and a new retailer status page.

Home Depot Support

Zinc now supports placing orders on Home Depot, expanding our retailer coverage to one of the largest home improvement retailers.

Estimated Delivery Dates

If provided by the retailer, Zinc will now extract estimated delivery dates during the checkout process and include them in your order details.

International Currency Support

Orders placed on retailers that use non-USD currencies are now automatically converted to USD at charge time. This makes it easier to place orders on international retailers without worrying about currency handling.

Retailer Status Page

We’ve added a user-facing retailer status page so you can monitor which retailers are currently supported and their operational status.

Improvements

  • Better rural address support — Fixed validation failures for rural and highway addresses where USPS data is limited
  • Clearer validation errors — Enhanced error messages for invalid addresses
  • Max price display — The order detail page in the dashboard now shows the max price set for each order
  • Direct product links — Order details now include direct links to the product URL
  • Editable addresses — Address fields are now editable in the create order flyout after selection
2026-02-27
Week of Feb 23
Week of Feb 23 updates
This week brings Canadian shipping support, saved payment selection for managed accounts, and improved tracking reliability.

Canadian Shipping Addresses

Zinc now supports shipping to Canada, continuing our expansion of international address coverage. Canadian addresses are fully validated during order creation.

Saved Payment Selection

When using managed accounts, you can now select which saved payment method to use for an order. If you have multiple cards on file with a retailer, you can specify exactly which one Zinc should use during checkout.

LaserShip Tracking Support

Orders shipped via LaserShip now include tracking numbers, giving you visibility into deliveries from this regional carrier.

Improvements

  • Better tracking extraction — Improved tracking number and verification code extraction with fewer false positives
  • Smarter email filtering — Enhanced filtering of emails before extracting tracking and verification data
  • More accurate merchant order IDs — Improved extraction of merchant order IDs from retailer confirmations
2026-02-20
Week of Feb 16
Week of Feb 16 updates
This week brings expanded retailer support with account-less checkout, international shipping to new regions, and improved order reliability.

Account-less Checkout for Walmart, Target & Wayfair

Until now, Zinc-managed checkout accounts were only available for Amazon. This week, we’re bringing the same experience to Walmart, Target, and Wayfair — meaning you can place orders on these retailers without creating or managing your own accounts. Just provide a shipping address and payment method, and Zinc handles the rest using our managed credentials.This is a major step forward: retailers that previously required you to bring your own account credentials are now accessible out of the box. And this is just the beginning — we’ll be rolling out managed checkout to more retailers soon.

International Shipping: New Zealand & Australia

Zinc now supports shipping to New Zealand and Australia, continuing our expansion of international address coverage. Addresses for both countries are fully validated during order creation.

Payment Verification for Managed Accounts

Managed accounts now support retailer-specific payment verification. If a retailer requires additional payment confirmation during checkout, Zinc stores and uses the appropriate verification hints automatically.

SMS Verification Code Support

Our checkout system now supports OTP retrieval from forwarded SMS verification codes, in addition to email-based codes. This improves success rates for retailers that use SMS-based authentication.

Improvements

  • Smarter cart validation — Fixed checkout failures caused by cart information no longer being displayed on the page
  • Better error codes — Added a specific payment_verification_required error code for clearer debugging
2026-02-13
Week of Feb 9
Week of Feb 9 updates
This week’s highlight is the launch of our Universal Checkout Skill for AI agents, plus auto wallet top-up and better order visibility.

Universal Checkout Skill

Zinc is now available as an Agent Skill — a new way for AI agents to place orders through natural language. Install the Universal Checkout Skill into OpenClaw, Claude Code, or Gemini CLI, and your agent can search for products, place orders, and check statuses — all from a single conversation.
  • Natural language ordering — Ask your agent to buy a product by URL, and it handles the rest
  • Search-to-purchase — Pair with Brave Search to find and order products in one workflow
  • Confirmation built in — The agent always confirms before spending real money
Learn more →

Auto Wallet Top-up

Never run out of funds mid-order. You can now configure automatic wallet top-ups that trigger whenever your balance drops below a threshold. Set your minimum balance and top-up amount from the new wallet settings page, and Zinc handles the rest.

Order Progress Timeline

Order details now include a visual timeline showing each step of the purchasing flow. See exactly where your order is and what’s already been completed.

Improvements

  • Email forwarding indicators — A new badge shows when forwarded verification emails have been detected for your managed accounts
  • Better Amazon tracking — Improved package tracking URL extraction from Amazon order emails
  • International address fixes — Fixed address validation for countries that don’t require a state or province field
2026-02-06
Week of Feb 2
Week of Feb 2 updates
This week’s highlight is a brand new retailer status page, plus stronger account security and better order visibility.

Retailer Status Page

Retailer status page
Zinc now has a dedicated status page with nightly integration test results for our top retailers. We’re committed to full transparency into what’s working and what isn’t — and we’ll be expanding coverage to more retailers over time.

TOTP Support for Retailer Credentials

Managed retail accounts now support Time-based One-Time Passwords (TOTP). If your retailer account uses two-factor authentication with an authenticator app, you can provide your TOTP secret and Zinc will automatically generate codes during login — no more manual verification steps.

Improved Order Progress

Incremental order status updates
Orders now report more granular progress updates as they move through each step of the purchasing flow, giving you better real-time visibility into order status.
2026-01-30
Week of Jan 26
Week of Jan 26 updates
This week we’re focused on reliability and expanding Zinc’s reach with international shipping support and B2B features.

International Order Support

Zinc now supports shipping to Germany, with more countries coming soon. International addresses are validated during order creation, and we’ve updated our date and currency formatting to handle international locales correctly.
  • Country configuration — Each retailer now has configurable supported shipping countries using ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes
  • Address validation — International addresses are validated before order creation
  • Flexible formats — Postal codes work with both zip_code and postal_code fields, and state/province fields are now optional for countries that don’t require them

Purchase Order Support

For B2B customers, you can now include a purchase order number with your orders. Just pass an optional po_number field and we’ll automatically detect PO number fields during checkout and fill them in.

Product Variant Fixes

Fixed an issue where variant verification was failing for products that have pre-selected variants on the page. Variants should now work correctly across all supported retailers.
2026-01-16
Week of Jan 12
Week of Jan 12 updates

Launch Week 1

January 20-24 — Zinc’s first launch week. Five days. Five releases.We’re rapidly expanding Zinc 2.0’s feature-set, vastly improving devex, and showing off some impressive demos to inspire you on what you can build with Zinc.Pay attention to your inboxes and our socials for Launch Week 1!

Account Selection in Orders

Account selection dropdown
The order form now includes a dropdown to choose between Zinc-managed accounts and your own retailer credentials. You can see exactly which account will be used before placing an order.
  • Visual account picker — Select from your saved retailer accounts directly in the order form
  • Curl command preview — See the exact API call that will be made, with one-click copy

Easier Gmail Setup

Setting up email forwarding for verification codes just got simpler. A new “Add Gmail Filter” button generates the exact filter you need with one click.

Smarter Retry Logic

We’ve improved how failed orders are retried to be more intelligent about when retries make sense.
  • Order-level tracking — Retry attempts are now tracked at the order level for better visibility
  • Skip hopeless retries — Orders that fail due to out-of-stock products, inaccessible items, or unavailable guest checkout no longer waste time retrying
2026-01-09
Week of Jan 5
Week of Jan 5 updates
This week we’re introducing managed retail accounts and smarter payment handling. These features give you more control over how orders are placed and make credential management significantly easier.

Managed Retail Accounts

Managed retail accounts
You can now use managed retail accounts to place orders with your own retailer credentials. This gives you more control over order placement and unlocks features that require being logged in.
  • Amazon account support — Orders placed with Amazon credentials now use our enhanced processing system for better reliability
  • Forwarding email addresses — Each managed account automatically gets a dedicated email address for verification codes and tracking notifications
  • Easy credential reference — Use short IDs to quickly identify and reference your saved retail credentials
  • Explicit credential selection — Specify exactly which credentials to use with the retailer_credentials_id parameter

Smarter Payment Handling

When using managed accounts, Zinc now automatically uses your saved payment method if you don’t provide one explicitly. This means less redundant data in your API calls.
  • Automatic payment detection — Orders with managed accounts can use saved payment methods without passing payment details each time
  • Flexible payment modes — Switch seamlessly between saved and explicit payment methods based on your needs
  • Clear error messages — Get helpful payment_method_required errors when a saved method is needed but doesn’t exist

Streamlined Onboarding

We’ve simplified the getting-started experience to help you start testing faster.
  • Skip optional steps — Skip non-essential onboarding steps and dive straight into testing
  • Faster setup — Streamlined flow gets you to your first test order more quickly

Better Error Tracking

Enhanced error reporting throughout the platform helps you debug issues faster with more specific error types and clearer messages.
2026-01-02
Week of Dec 29
Week of Dec 29 updates
A lighter week with focused improvements to order search and price clarity, plus continued infrastructure work.You can now search for orders by order ID, making it easier to find specific orders in your dashboard.

Clearer Price Warnings

When an order exceeds your maximum price threshold, you’ll now see a clear “Max Price Exceeded” warning instead of a generic failure message. This makes it easier to understand why an order didn’t complete.

Infrastructure Improvements

We’ve been working on backend improvements to support future features:
  • Multi-worker architecture — Building distributed systems for better scalability
  • Enhanced authentication — Improving support for retailer accounts that require login
  • Better error tracking — Expanding our monitoring to catch and fix issues faster
2025-12-26
Week of Dec 22
Week of Dec 22 updates
This week brought intelligent product variant interpretation and expanded financial management capabilities. The highlight: we can now automatically understand and parse product variants from plaintext strings.

Product Variant Interpretation

Product variant interpretation
The biggest update this week is our ability to intelligently interpret product variants from plaintext strings. Instead of requiring structured data, you can now provide variant information as natural text and we’ll automatically parse it into the correct format.
  • Intelligent parsing — Automatically interpret size, color, and style options from plaintext strings
  • Flexible input — No need to pre-structure variant data, just provide the information naturally
  • Clear label/value pairs — Properly formatted variants for accurate order placement

Better Test Order Flow

Better test order flow
We’ve streamlined the in-app test order experience with rich previews and variant management.
  • URL preview cards — See product images and details before placing test orders using Open Graph metadata
  • Variant support — Test orders now fully support product variants with the new interpretation system
  • Mobile-optimized — Fully responsive order interface that works seamlessly on mobile devices

Improvements

  • Better error messages — Clearer feedback when payment or order issues occur
  • Fixed retry logic — Order retry now works correctly and only triggers for failed orders
2025-12-19
Week of Dec 15
Week of Dec 15 updates
We finally released the latest version of Zinc. This initial release brings dramatically expanded retailer support, along with key order management features.

V2 Beta Launch

Zinc 2.0 beta is now available with a modern API and dashboard. This release dramatically expands our retailer coverage.
  • More Retailers: Dramatically expanded retailer support across the world’s top online stores
  • Modern API: Clean, consistent API design for better developer experience
Some v1 features (account automation, tracking, returns) are coming soon. See migrating from v1 for details.

Order Management

Order management features
You can now cancel orders directly from the dashboard and retry failed orders through the API. This gives you more control over your order lifecycle without needing to contact support.
  • Cancel orders — Stop orders before they’re fulfilled when plans change (available in dashboard)
  • Retry failed orders — Automatically retry orders that failed due to temporary issues (available via API)

Amazon Integration

Amazon integration
For customers who need Amazon’s full feature set during the v2 transition, orders can now be automatically proxied through our v1 API. This ensures continuity while we complete v2 feature parity.

Platform Improvements

We’ve also made several improvements to the overall platform experience:
  • Better order display — Improved how order details are shown in the dashboard
  • Payment notifications — Clearer notifications when payment methods need attention
2025-12-12
Week of Dec 7
Week of Dec 7 updates
This week brought improvements to wallet management and ordering reliability. We’re making it easier to manage your account balance and ensuring orders succeed more consistently.

Wallet Management

Wallet management interface
You can now add funds directly to your wallet using your saved payment methods. Previously, you had to contact support to top up your account — now you can do it yourself in seconds.We’ve also added detailed descriptions to all wallet transactions, so you can see exactly what each charge was for (API fees, order costs, etc.).

More Reliable Orders

Orders now automatically retry when they encounter temporary issues, making the overall process more reliable. We’ve also made several improvements:
  • Smarter price checking — We now validate prices only at the final checkout step, reducing premature order failures
  • More accurate pricing — Enhanced price extraction logic handles varied retailer formats more reliably