Last week’s biggest retail technology deals at a glance

RTIH rounds up the stand out retail systems deals, deployments and pilots from the past seven days. Featuring Tesco, Walmart, Kraft Heinz and Carrefour.

The Bicester Village Shopping Collection, which consists of 11 retail destinations in Europe and China, created and operated by Value Retail, has announced a buy now, pay later partnership with Zilch.

Zilch’s service will be offered to all of the nine villages within The Bicester Village Shopping Collection in Europe, launching first at Bicester Village in Oxfordshire. 

Kraft Heinz, in partnership with Publicis and Evolve Media, has worked with shoppertainment specialist Firework to power a shoppable livestream event at its Halloween pop-up store in Santa Monica, CA, as part of its Tomato Blood Ketchup campaign.

The event allows for direct purchases and is carried on the Heinz Halloween website and simulcast on Facebook and YouTube. 

US discounter Grocery Outlet has partnered with Instacart, marking the first time that the company will offer an e-commerce solution to its customers.

Buy now pay later specialist Clearpay has announced new partnerships with fashion and beauty brands, Sweaty Betty, Feelunique, Mainline Menswear, Hawes & Curtis and Ghost, as well as DIY store, FFX

Customer interaction management specialist, Critizr, has announced the launch of WhatsApp within its Critizr Connection platform. 

Responding to the growing need of brands to build proximity between store managers and their customers, the new feature will be rolled out for Critizr Connection’s 60,000+ retail users across Europe.

The functionality will initially be deployed in all hypermarkets for Critizr's flagship customer, Carrefour.

Musicians can now sell directly to their fans on Spotify using the Shopify e-commerce platform.

By connecting their Spotify for Artists accounts with their Shopify online stores, artists can sync their product catalogues and showcase products of their choice directly on their Spotify profiles.

Ellie Goulding and Jax Jones are among the first UK artists and Shopify merchants to take advantage of this new channel.

Booths, a regional supermarket chain in the UK, has chosen RELEX Solutions to manage seasonal, promotional, and end of lifecycle products with its markdown pricing and optimisation solution. 

Oracle NetSuite has announced a new partnership with plant-based food venture deliciously ella.

UK startup Jisp says that it has reached 10,000 scans, 5,000 taps and 2,000 redemptions in five weeks of a Scan & Save trial with 14 Nisa stores.

The company has been working with such brands as Kellogg’s, Red Bull and Nomad Foods to offer savings on certain products using augmented reality vouchers.

Tesco has launched its first high street checkout-free store.

As we reported in July, named GetGo, this can be found in High Holborn, on the edge of the City of London.

The Body Shop and Instacart have announced a partnership that offers customers same-day delivery from all 165 The Body Shop retail locations in the US and Canada on the latter’s Marketplace offering. 

Pacers Sports & Entertainment and Zippin have teamed up to give Gainbridge Fieldhouse guests a checkout-free food and beverage experience. 

Gainbridge Fieldhouse is an indoor arena located in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. 

It is the home of the Indiana Pacers of the National Basketball Association and the Indiana Fever of the Women's National Basketball Association. It also hosts college basketball games, indoor concerts, and ice hockey.

Natural Baby Shower has partnered with Go Instore to add one to one live video retail to its website.

Customers can now speak to a nursery specialist in-store in order to get advice and see products. 

They can also access this through an appointment service, powered by Appointedd, a cloud-based online booking platform.

Walmart's Global Tech and Store No. 8 teams are testing out a text to shop tool in select areas.

No news on when exactly the feature will be released to everyone, but, in a press release, Dominique Essig, Vice President of Conversational Commerce at Store No. 8, said it will be “more widely available in the future."

 La Perla has deployed Quantum Metric’s continuous product design platform as part of a drive to improve its digital shopping offering.

US-based autonomous shopping venture AiFi has launched four Zappka stores in Poznan, Krakow, and Warsaw in Poland, all micro-markets in high traffic areas and open 24/7. 

In the States, meanwhile, building on BottleRock (3rd-5th September, Napa Valley), AiFi continues to activate autonomous shopping at music festivals, in partnership with Verizon 5G.

This includes Sea.Hear.Now (18th-19th September, Asbury Park) and Governor’s Ball (24th-25th September, New York).