Amazon Prime Now delivery service appears unavailable in Singapore

Amazon’s first foray into the Southeast Asian market appears to have hit a roadblock.

The e-commerce giant launched its express, same-day delivery service, Prime Now, on Thursday morning in Singapore, but by that afternoon the service seemed to have become unusable.

Many users in Singapore were unable to select a delivery window for their purchases to be delivered at the checkout screen. A message stated that all remaining delivery windows “for today and tomorrow are currently unavailable,” and that users should check in later for updates.

Some items listed also appeared to be either in low supply or to have run out of stock on Friday morning.

On Thursday, Amazon said in a statement: “We are thrilled customers in Singapore love ultra-fast delivery as much as we do. Due to great customer response, delivery is currently unavailable. We encourage customers to check back soon.”

Amazon did not immediately respond to CNBC’s query about when the delivery service might be available again.

The Prime Now service is available in Singapore through the app, which can be downloaded on Google’s Play store and Apple’s App store. Prime Now is part of Amazon’s Prime membership service and was launched in December 2014 in New York. To-date, the service is available in more than 50 cities in nine countries, including Berlin, London, Madrid, Rome and Tokyo.

There are several delivery options given: For orders below 40 Singapore dollars ($29.48), users pay a S$5.99 delivery fee; orders above S$40 are delivered free in a two-hour delivery window. For those wanting to get their goods within an hour, they pony up S$9.99 per order.

— CNBC’s Leslie Shaffer contributed to this report.