Definition
An agent signs an agency agreement with the enterprise, buys IoT SIMs and plans through agent-price purchasing, and sells them to end customers. What makes the role an agent is the purchase: stock comes in at the agent price, and the margin or the settlement revenue share comes after the sale.
What the role includes
- A purchase, not an allocation: The agent buys SIMs and plans from the agent price list, and each purchase stays on record.
- Sales credit: After those SIMs are sold, each order takes sales attribution to that agent.
- Pay on a cycle: The share is based on purchase quantity or sales amount. A settlement statement is produced on a cycle, often monthly, and then paid.
- A portal of its own: On the agent self-service portal the agent reads prices, orders, and opens share detail.
How this differs from a distributor
An agent buys and is paid at settlement. A distributor is given a quota and is paid by payment split when the order is paid. The agent pays the agent price and waits for the cycle. The distributor is allocated stock, and each level receives its share as the payment lands. The distributor entry covers that second model.
Shapes the program can take
The same role can be a multi-level agency, a regional agent, or an industry agent. Territory cuts the regional agent. Industry, such as connected vehicles or shared devices, cuts the industry agent. The agent price and the share can differ in each case.
When an enterprise chooses it
Use an agent when the channel should buy first and sell second, so stock and cash stay with a purchase record. The agent opens the agent self-service portal, reads the agent price list, orders, and later opens the settlement statement and the share lines. The enterprise sets the revenue-share rate and the settlement period, and keeps sales attribution accurate, or the payout will be wrong. Against a distributor, this fits a B2B channel that buys in volume and can wait for the settlement cycle.
What the enterprise has to run
Admission, grade, and review belong with the agent record. Admission is the agency agreement plus an agent price list and a revenue-share rate. The agent self-service portal takes the day-to-day work off the operations desk. Purchases and sales have to be stored completely enough to calculate settlement revenue share. A multi-level agency needs the parent-child link and how the share is split between levels. The enterprise can run agents, distributors, or both, depending on the channel.
The agreement has to say whether the SIMs or the money leave first
On the platform, an agent is a purchasing party. A purchase order is formed first, SIMs or plans move from enterprise stock to that party, and that party sells them on. An agent is not a split-payment receiver on a distribution tree. The agreement and the system settings have to line up on three points: what goods can be bought, at what price, and whether payment is prepaid or settled on account terms. Writing “exclusive in this region” only in the contract, with no region limit and no limit on sellable plans in the system, still lets another agent order the same batch. When a grade goes up or down, unfinished purchase orders have to be priced either at the grade at order time or at the grade at payment time. That choice has to be fixed in advance. After the agent account is disabled, unactivated SIMs in that name are frozen, taken back, or allowed to sell through. That cannot rest on a verbal operations agreement. When SimtoLink settles channels, the agent’s purchase records are tied to the amount payable in settlement and revenue sharing. Retail flow that has no purchase order should not automatically become revenue share payable to that agent.
A regional agent and an industry agent draw on different pools
A regional agent limits the number ranges and plans that can be purchased by where the SIM is used or sold. An industry agent limits them by device type or project type. Both dimensions can exist at once, but a SIM can have only one primary owning agent. It cannot be counted as an East China purchase and a connected-vehicle purchase, each taking a full purchase share. If the enterprise wants the industry agent to take a technical service fee and the regional agent to take the SIM margin, those should be two fee lines. They should not split one purchase price so that both agents are treated as having purchased the full amount. For a shipment that crosses regions, whether the receiving place or the region of the ordering account decides has to land as a region field on the purchase order. If an industry plan is not authorized for that agent, the plan should not appear in the portal. The order should not fail later with “no permission.” If an end user the agent developed later signs directly with the enterprise, the SIM’s purchase attribution can remain, and new enterprise orders are no longer counted to that agent. The two stretches of history are cut by an effective date.
What happens to SIMs in flight when the grade is lowered
Dropping an agent from a high grade to a low grade because targets were missed changes the purchase unit price and the revenue-share rate from then on. It should not rewrite SIMs that have already been transferred. For a SIM already sold and bound to a user, renewal share uses the rate in force when the renewal happens, and the order records the grade id at that time. A purchase order that locked the old price and was not paid before the downgrade should be voided and placed again if it times out unpaid, so the old tier cannot still close after the downgrade. If a large stock of unactivated SIMs can keep selling at the old price, the downgrade never constrains inventory. If they are forcibly taken back, SIMs already built into devices that cannot be physically recovered have to be left out. In practice, SIMs not yet shipped can be reclaimed, while preinstalled SIMs only stop new purchases, and the SIM carries a freeze reason. In a multi-level agency, downgrading a parent should not automatically downgrade the children, unless a child’s price list explicitly references the parent’s tier instead of holding a price list of its own.