Check out our most clicked retail technology articles from last week, including Morrisons, Instacart, DoorDash, Gap Inc., lululemon, Shopify, Just Eat, Revolut, Strawberry, TFG London, and the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards.

Morrisons bins Instacart AI powered Caper Carts trial amid DoorDash acquisition talks

In July, we reported that Morrisons had launched Instacart’s Caper Cart smart trolleys at a Preston supermarket, marking North American firm Instacart’s first retail partnership in the UK for its AI powered solution.

Three months later, however, the retailer is pulling the trial as DoorDash gets set to acquire Instacart in a deal that values the grocery technology specialist at around $17 billion. Separately, Instacart said in a regulatory filing on ⁠Monday that it would wind down its Caper Cart business by the end of the second quarter of 2027, expecting pre-tax charges of $55 million to $80 million related to the move.

The plan is to reinvest any savings into strategic growth initiatives, which includes other in-store solutions like smart price tags and computer vision technology to help grocers track in-store inventory.

Responding to the news, retail analyst Steve Dresser said on LinkedIn: "Not one to mock innovation, it's vital. But this was always overplayed and seemed to be a chance for people to get their name in lights, rather than a meaningful trial to scale."

lululemon taps Shop Pay from Shopify across retailer's US and Canadian e-commerce sites

lululemon has announced the addition of Shopify's Shop Pay solution to its Canada and US e-commerce sites.

"We strive to meet our guests where they are, with an online experience that is thoughtful, secure, and easy to use,” says Nick Engel, SVP Global Digital Experience, lululemon.

“Shop Pay has earned its place in how people shop online, creating the kind of checkout where hundreds of small details come together into something that just works. Bringing it to lululemon.com in the US and Canada gives our guests a familiar, trusted way to complete a purchase, and takes one more step out of the path to getting what they came for.”

Customers can access one-tap checkout, saved payment and shipping details, and order tracking in the Shop app. 

"lululemon sets the bar for brand experience, and checkout is one of the most important moments in the online purchase process,” says Lauren Nemeth, VP Global Enterprise, Shopify. "Shop Pay is already trusted by hundreds of millions of shoppers - now lululemon can offer it on top of their existing infrastructure.”

John Lewis, Asda, Morrisons, H&M, Dunelm, and Waitrose among 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards finalists

We're hugely pleased to present the finalists and shortlists for the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards, sponsored by 3D Cloud, Business France, and Retail Technology Show 2027. We received a record number of entries this year and many fantastic examples of technology excellence driving transformative change across the global retail sector

Congratulations to all those who made it through the initial submission process! Our winners will be announced this week at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Ceremony in Central London.

The event will be held on Wednesday, 4th November and consist of a drinks reception, three course meal, awards ceremony presided over by award winning stand-up comedian, presenter, actor and broadcaster, Aurie Styla, and after party until 1am.

Click here to book your place at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, 4th November.

Fashion retailer Gap Inc. starts scaling Bridgette, an AI tool for seasonal hiring, across stores and DCs

Gap Inc. has started to scale Bridgette, an AI enabled virtual career guide for seasonal hiring, across its stores and distribution centres.

Bridgette answers candidate questions at any hour, coordinates interviews and sends reminders. In a pilot, nearly 45,000 candidates engaged with it, and it has scheduled more than 7,000 interviews for store leaders. 

In a LinkedIn post, Sven Gerjets, EVP and CTO at Gap Inc., said: "It works every day of the week, which is a better schedule than mine. What I care about most is what it does not do. Managers still run the interviews and make the hiring decisions. That is the point."

He added: "Our approach to AI is human centred and digitally enabled. For every step in a process, we ask what should be automated, what should be AI assisted, and what should stay with a person. Then we redesign the work around the outcome instead of speeding up the old process."

"Hiring is a good example, because the repetitive coordination was crowding out the conversations that build great teams. I keep coming back to a simple test. Does the technology give people their time back for the human work that matters most?"

McKinsey research shows retailers are losing the start of the shopping journey to AI tools

29% of AI shoppers say AI chat or search tools had the biggest influence on their most recent purchase - three times the share citing traditional search engines (9%), and more than retailers’ platforms and AI assistants combined (21%), according to new McKinsey & Company research drawing on a survey of approximately 21,000 consumers in 11 markets. 

The shift is moving beyond discovery to influence and transactions. In the US, the share of AI users completing a purchase through AI has surged 70% since December 2025, from 10% to 17%.

Kelsey Robinson, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company, says: "Consumers are showing unmet appetite and preference for AI shopping. Nearly a third of AI shoppers said AI chat or search tools were the biggest influence on their recent purchase. The winners this holiday season will be those that have stood up an agentic capability and are treating this as an always-on experimentation muscle."

Revolut Pay one-click account-to-account payments go live on Just Eat app and online

Just Eat has announced a partnership with Revolut, meaning that the on demand delivery big hitter's customers can now select Revolut Pay for a one-click checkout experience within its app and online in the UK and Ireland. 

To mark the launch, users can earn a 5x RevPoints boost on every Just Eat purchase between 28th October and 27th December. Following the promotional window, customers will retain a 2x points boost on every purchase, alongside the ability to instantly redeem RevPoints for cash discounts at the Just Eat app and web checkout.

Selecting this option means that customers will no longer need to manually input card details and can authorise restaurant and grocery orders using biometric authentication (Face ID or fingerprint recognition) through their Revolut account. 

Michiel Verberg, Head of Global Strategic Partnerships at Just Eat, says:  "We're always looking for ways to make ordering from Just Eat faster and more rewarding. Revolut Pay removes a step from checkout, and the RevPoints boost gives customers something back on every order. This is the start of two of Europe's leading technology companies building a better user experience together, which is good news for consumers."

Swedish startup Strawberry launches AI agent platform and preps Series A funding round

Strawberry, a startup with $6 million in funding from EQT and General Catalyst, has launched 1.0 of its AI agent platform built for non-technical teams, such as sales, recruiting, customer support and marketing.

It is free to try and lets users and teams create their own virtual colleagues, called AI companions. According to Strawberry, unlike chatbots such as Claude and ChatGPT, which take a prompt and complete a task, companions work like real colleagues, alongside people and not instead of them. It operates as a browser, where a team's context, workflows and logins already live. A companion remembers how your team works and gets better the more you work together, because it is connected to all of that context.

"The technology is already here: agents can now work for weeks in a row. Yet, we see so many companies struggle with adoption. We built a product so delightful that teams adopt it naturally, with companions you bring into your team like colleagues," says Charles Maddock, CEO and Co-founder at Strawberry.

"Today the person who is great with Claude keeps all of it on their own laptop. In Strawberry you train a companion once, and everyone on the team gets it, with everything it has learned. The browser is fast becoming the front line for AI, and the Strawberry team is at the centre of that shift," says Yuri Sagalov, Partner, General Catalyst.

The Stockholm, Sweden-based company plans to follow this launch with a Series A funding round.

Phase Eight owner TFG London contacts customers as personal data is accessed following cyber attack

The owner of Hobbs, Whistles and Phase Eight has contacted its customers following a cyber security incident earlier this month and urged them to be alert to unexpected emails, calls or text messages.

TFG London - the UK arm of retail conglomerate The Foschini Group - identified an incident on Sunday, 11th October affecting some IT systems and specifically impacting the Phase Eight, Hobbs, and Whistles fashion brands.

In an email sent to customers, dated 28th October, TFG London CEO Justin Hampshire said: "On identifying a cybersecurity incident affecting some of our IT systems, we acted immediately to secure our systems, brought in independent cybersecurity experts, and notified the relevant government authorities."

He added: "Unfortunately, our investigation has shown that some personal data has been accessed, and we wanted to contact you about this as soon as we could. We are contacting all of our customers as a precaution. This does not mean that your information was affected, and our investigation into exactly which information has been accessed is continuing."

The information affected could include contact and delivery details, order information, and in some cases limited payment information, such as the last four digits of a payment card. It doesn't include useable payment card details.