Amazon appears set to start its Australian retail assault on Friday having reportedly told third-party sellers to prepare to receive orders, and planning an ice-cream based marketing campaign.

Retail insiders have for some time said Amazon would choose to start trading from its Australian website before this week's "Black Friday" shopping event, and the accompanying "Cyber Monday" online discounting event.

And they appear to be right. An email sent to retailers who have signed up to use Amazon's marketplace platform, which has been obtained and re-published by the website LifeHacker, says sellers should prepare to take orders from 2pm Thursday.

"To prepare for the launch of the Amazon Marketplace in Australia we will start an internal testing phase with a small number of customers," the email says.