Amazon today announced the launch of Counter – a new network of staffed pick up points that allows the company's customers to collect their Amazon parcels in-store at a partner location.

At launch, Amazon's customers will have access to thousands of Counter locations in the UK and Italy, with more locations and partners coming on board across Europe in the future. Starting today, delivery to an Amazon Counter location is available on the items sold on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.it and works with One-Day and Standard Shipping. The service is available at no extra cost to Prime members.

Counter is part of the Amazon Hub family, which includes Lockers. For store partners, Counter enables store staff to serve customers without disrupting their daily activities.

Following trials with launch partners, Amazon Counter goes live today and will be rolled out across partner stores throughout 2019, including at hundreds of NEXT stores in the UK and thousands of stores in Italy with Amazon's partners Giunti, Fermopoint and SisalPay.

After shopping on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.it, Amazon customers proceed to checkout and select a Counter pick up point as their delivery location. As soon as their package arrives at the store, the customer receives an e-mail notification with a unique barcode as well as the address and opening hours of their selected store, and will have 14 days to collect their parcel. At the store, Amazon customers show the barcode to the partner store staff, who will scan it, retrieve the package, and hand it to the customer.