According to the newspaper Bilanz, Amazon has signed an agreement with Swiss post to provide rapid customs clearance. The head of postal customs, Felix Stierli, confirmed discussions with the company.

A maximum customs clearance time of 3 hours will allow 24-hour delivery, one element of Amazon’s Prime offer.

Once Prime is available, Swiss customers will be able to access most of the company’s complete online offer, which includes 229 million products.

Rather than setting up a logistics base in Switzerland, Amazon plans to service Switzerland from Germany.

The first packages are expected in January or February, according to the article.

From 1 January 2019, companies such as Amazon will be required to charge Swiss VAT, even on low value items.

The newspaper Le Temps says the firm Skyadvisory found that the same basket of products on Amazon.de was 38% cheaper than at Migros and 36% cheaper than at Coop, a comparison which ignores Germany’s 11% higher VAT rate.

More on this:

Bilanz article (in German)

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