Amazon plans to open up to 3,000 cashier-less Amazon Go convenience stores by 2021, according to a report in Bloomberg News. 

The world’s largest online retailer is moving aggressively into the bricks and mortar space, and the latest move follows purchases such as 2016’s Whole Foods business, and places it in direct competition with retail giants such as Walmart and Target in the US.

The first Go store opened in Seattle in 2016 and Amazon has been busy assessing its offline model before making a bigger play in the traditonal retail space, the report says.

The second store opened in Chicago just a couple of weeks ago, while more stores are planned for Chicago and San Francisco towards the end of this year and early 2019.

The Go model is based on cashier-less stores where customers scan their Amazon accounts with their smartphones and can then shop for groceries or household goods like any other physical store.

Amazon is already taking a bite out of traditional retailers’ markets with recent pushes into online grocery deliveries and strengthening the link between the Whole Foods network and its Prime subscription service.

Amazon has not announced plans to launch Go stores in Australia as yet.