The retail technology week in numbers

€150 million…Barcelona-based on-demand delivery startup Glovo has closed a €150 million ($167 million) Series E funding round, led by Mubadala, with support from previous investors Drake Enterprises, Idinvest and Lakestar.

110…Swedish FinTech Klarna has expanded its buy now, pay later partnership with schuh. Its products are already live on the retailer’s websites in the UK and Germany and now Klarna’s Pay in 3 offering will be available at over 110 UK stores before Christmas.

75%…Almost 75% of retailers are expecting their Christmas sales to be better than last year, but for the biggest proportion (31%) they will only be slight improvements. That’s according to research from IRX, incorporating eDX, which is set to take place on 1st and 2nd April 2020 at the NEC.

50%…UK shoppers blame business rates and rents for holding retailers back in delivering innovative and engaging in-store environments, according to a report by RetailEXPO.

A survey of 2,000 people revealed that 54% felt there would always be a role for retail on the high street, with a further 68% saying it wouldn’t be the same without shops. 50%, however, felt that the burden of business rates and rents was a major issue.

4…Online fashion venture Farfetch has announced that applications are now open to join its Dream Assembly 4 accelerator programme.

72% of UK shoppers think that retailers could do more to make their e-commerce sites more engaging according to research from Tribe.

16.4%…UK online sales rose by 16.4% year-on-year in November, thanks to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This is the highest growth since April 2018, according to IMRG and Capgemini research.

161 million…The installed base of contactless-enabled PoS devices will exceed 161 million by 2024, up from 78 million in 2019, according to Juniper Research. Contactless PoS devices will then be 94% of all PoS devices in use.

4…Clearpay, the UK arm of Australian Afterpay Touch Group, has officially launched a Pay in 4 partnership with Asos.

£1 billion…Retail delivery platform venture, Sorted, has hit the £1 billion shipment mark.

$1.2 billion…Klarna’s CEO has not ruled out taking public Europe’s most valuable FinTech venture, although another funding round could also be possible.

A $460 million investment pegged the payment venture’s worth at $5.5 billion back in August. Asked by TechCrunch to confirm that it had raised $1.2 billion altogether from investors, Sebastian Siemiatkowski quipped: “It sounds like you know better than I do”.

€1 billion…Blackrock is increasing its stake in The Hut Group as part of a €1 billion-plus capital-raising that will transform the online retailer’s balance sheet.