Amazon is set to shutter its daily deals site, Amazon Local, on Dec. 18, 2015, according to a message on the service’s home page. The online marketplace also will discontinue its Amazon Local app. The e-Commerce giant is also discontinuing Register, its mobile credit card processing division, early next year.
Consumers can still redeem valid vouchers purchased through the Local site after Dec. 18. These vouchers will remain valid per the expiration date on the voucher itself. Amazon’s Deal of the Day, Gold Box Deals and Kindle Daily Deals are not affected by this announcement, according to the Amazon FAQ.
While daily deals and flash sales sites gained traction in the retail industry in the late 2000s, the business model has faltered in recent years. LivingSocial, the daily deals platform owned partly by Amazon, recently laid off 20% of its employees and is presently reshaping its business as a marketplace focused on improving the customer experience in daily transactions. Another major daily deals platform, Groupon, also recently announced that it was laying off 1,100 employees and shuttering operations in seven countries by September 2016.
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“We’ve learned a great deal from the daily deals business and will look for ways to apply these lessons in the future as we continue to innovate on behalf of our customers and merchants,” an Amazon spokesperson told GeekWire, which first reported on the Local shutdown.
Local is not the only Amazon branch to cease operations; the e-Commerce giant is closing Amazon Register, its mobile credit card processing division, on Feb. 1, 2016. The Register service is designed to allow businesses to accept payments via a combination mobile app and card reading device similar to Square and PayPal.
Consumers can gain access to full reports and transaction history in the Amazon Register app up until Feb. 28, 2016.
