Amazon announced that it will soon stop offering its Local Register service as well as its Amazon Local app, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Local Register is a mobile credit card processing service meant for small businesses like food trucks and coffee shops. The company began offering the service in August of last year. It has lower processing fees than competitors like Square and PayPal Holdings Inc., but never became popular. The service will be shut down as of February 1.
Amazon Local is a daily deal coupon service similar to Groupon. The app launched over 4 years ago, around the same time Groupon became popular, and will stop being offered as of December 18, GeekWire writes. You won’t be able to download it after the date, but you’ll still be able to redeem coupons that you’ve already bought.
Daily deals seem to be losing their customer base all around. LivingSocial, another daily deals company of which Amazon owns a 30% stake, was once valued at over $1 billion. That estimation dropped down to $242 million at the end of 2014, and the company recently cut 20% of its workforce. Groupon, which also cut jobs recently, has ceased operations in seven countries just last month, and shares of the company have fallen 39% this past year.
An Amazon spokesperson told GeekWire, “We’ve learned a great deal from the daily-deals business and will look for ways to apply these lessons in the future.”
