Amazon has launched Amazon Lens for South African customers in the Amazon Shopping app (on Google Play and Apple App Store), letting you search for products using photos, screenshots or barcodes instead of typing text.

The feature is live now and is part of Amazon’s broader push to use AI and computer vision to simplify online shopping.

Amazon Lens is a visual search tool built into the app’s search bar. If you tap the camera icon in the app’s search bar, you’ll get the option to take a photo with the app, take a screenshot, scan a barcode or even upload an image you’ve already taken.

You can even upload an image and circle the product you want with the “circle to search” option. Pretty sweet.

Online retail in SA grew by a phenomenal 35% from R96bn in 2024 to R130bn in 2025, driven in large part by online grocery delivery and international e-commerce stores making inroads into the country.

In fact, a lot of South African shoppers might already be familiar with visual product search, as both Temu and Shein have these features, as does local retailer Mr Price. Notably, Bash and Woolworths already have in-app barcode-scanning functionality.

Internationally, visual shopping’s on the rise, with purportedly nearly half (44%) of Instagram’s 3 billion users using the app to discover products and shop every week, so local e-commerce stores might want to take note of this feature.

Launching Amazon Lens in South Africa isn’t just another feature update: Visual search was an element of Amazon shopping in major regions like the US and EU since 2014, but AI has unlocked major new abilities. And, after a successful 2024 launch in the US, which showed a 50% growth in adoption in 2025, it's enabled them to scale and launch in more regions.

Visual search reduces one of the oldest friction points in e‑commerce, i.e. finding the right product, making exploration more natural and faster. So, for a market already on a steep growth curve, it can shape how consumers expect to discover and buy products online going forward.

We want to keep an eye on how SA’s major local e-commerce players respond to visual product discovery, like Amazon Lens, in the next few months. Especially if it begins to impact user expectations.

We’re also keen to try out Lens, because we’re curious how Amazon in SA will handle people potentially wanting items that are scarce or unavailable locally. The local store already offers just a fraction of what’s available in overseas markets, which is often frustrating.

At the same time, it could be a smart move for Amazon to discover what South Africans really want, and then figure out how to supply it to them without the end user having to deal with import tax and stuff. They have said they wanted to build the SA store to a point where 60% of products are third-party supplied, after all.