The retail technology week in numbers

10%...UK footfall on Boxing Day will be down 10% on the daily average, according to ShopperTrak.

38%...FreedomPay has released research looking at UK consumers’ shopping and spending in airports.

It surveyed 2,500 Brits who have travelled in the past two years and found that traditional methods of payment remain popular with debit cards taking the top slot at 38%. Cash came in at 28% and credit cards at 22%. The use of e-payment devices is more popular amongst 18-24 year olds. 22% of the people within this age group prefer mobile payments and wearables, compared to only 4% of those aged 55 years above.

$7.5 million...Flux, a UK startup whose retail partners include Costa Coffee and EAT, has closed a $7.5 million Series A round led by e.ventures along with existing investors PROfounders and Anthemis.

9.5 million....The UK smart speaker sector is booming and Amazon Echo is its poster child, although its market share is set to drop, according to eMarketer research.

In 2018, 9.5 million Brits will use a smart speaker, up 98.6% over 2017. 68% of those will use an Amazon Echo and 26.2% a Google Home.

8.1%...It isn't just bricks and mortar retailers who are facing tough times. UK online retail sales have suffered their worst November growth since 2011, coming in at just +8.1% year-on-year (YoY), as Black Friday discounting fell flat, according to the latest IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index.

155...Patisserie Valerie has partnered with Yoyo to introduce a mobile payments and loyalty app. This will be rolled out across all 155 stores in the UK and Ireland in February.

One in four Brits who shop online around the Christmas period find that at least one of their parcels fails to turn up, according to Which? research involving 2,000 people. And those that do get delivered are sometimes tossed over the fence, handed to a neighbour never to be seen again, put in the bin or left out in the rain.

20%....UK shopper traffic is set to rise by 20% on the daily average this Friday, according to ShopperTrak.

£1.65 billion...Research by VoucherCodes.co.uk and the Centre of Retail Research (CRR) reveals 14.9 million UK shoppers are expected to spend £1.65 billion on their final Christmas purchases on Super Saturday – the last Saturday before the big day.

74% of UK High Street stores and 79% of online retailers offered some kind of sale or promotion over the Black Friday weekend, compared with 36% and 72% respectively in the first week of December 2017, according to PwC.

$1.9 trillion...The leading 20 global grocery markets are set to generate an additional $1.9 trillion in sales, growing by 28% between 2018 and 2023, according to IGD.