At the moment, Amazon doesn’t have any services in the Southeast Asian region, but that’s set to change according to leading tech news website TechCrunch, with plans to launch right here in Singapore early next year.
It’s been reported that the online retail conglomerate will highly likely roll out its Prime delivery service and the AmazonFresh grocery service. There was also word in the air that an offer to acquire Redmart was on the table, but rejected because it was “deemed too low”. It makes sense for Amazon to come to Singapore because 78% of Singapore consumers favor the use of credit and debit cards, and, according to Bloomberg, the number of vacancies in malls are at an all time high. Also, we’re a small city, so it’ll probably be much easier for Amazon to run the operations. However, Amazon has yet to respond, but TechCrunch says they’ve been actively hiring new staff and acquiring assets here in Singapore.
It’s not the first time that Singapore has been picked as the first country in the region for a digital service; we were the first in Asia to have Samsung Pay and Android Pay, and we were the first in the world to run a driverless taxi service trial. We’re just that cool.
