Retail

Retail
$349 Billion Could Move Through a Much Smarter Checkout
July 28, 2026

A good offer can lose its value when the shopper never sees it. That problem gets expensive fast when the missed moment happens at checkout. “The Smart Basket Opportunity: How Merchants Can Capture More Consumer Spending” was produced in collaboration with FIS. PYMNTS Intelligence independently...

Retail
Amazon and Walmart Face a New Gatekeeper for Loyalty
July 23, 2026

This summer, Amazon moved Prime Day to June 23-26, leaving July without its usual commercial centerpiece for the first time outside the pandemic-disrupted 2021 event.  The shift created an apparent hole in merchants’ calendars. What emerged instead was a clearer view of how large-scale shopping...

Retail
Amazon Revamping Prime Video to Spotlight AI
July 23, 2026

Amazon’s founder reportedly sees Prime Video as the place to tout the company’s AI efforts. Jeff Bezos has urged Prime Video boss Mike Hopkins to revamp the streaming service to give artificial intelligence (AI) a starring role, Reuters reported Thursday (July 23), citing four sources with direct knowledge of...

Retail
Retail Stores Are Becoming Financial Destinations
July 23, 2026

Watch more: How Stores Became the New Front Door for Everyday Money Movement Retailers measured success by the products that left the store — a tally that’s as old as commerce. Today another metric is beginning to matter: the financial activity that takes place before...

Retail
Amazon Trims AGI Team to Focus on Core Initiatives
July 22, 2026

Amazon has cut jobs in its artificial general intelligence (AGI) group, Reuters reported Wednesday (July 22). The move follows Amazon’s consolidation of AGI work into part of a larger group that also includes silicon development and quantum computing in December 2025, the departure of AGI-focused...

Retail
The $557 Back-to-School Amazon-Walmart Tug of War
July 16, 2026

U.S. consumers kept spending in June, but the mix shows why Walmart and Amazon are leaning harder into price as the back-to-school season begins. The Commerce Department’s June retail sales report showed sales rising 0.2% from May to $768.6 billion and 6.7% from a year earlier. A...

Retail
Retail Growth Masks a More Selective Shopper
July 16, 2026

In June, retail sales continued to grow, but the composition of that growth saw consumers making more deliberate choices about where their money goes. Households continued to spend where purchases were difficult to postpone, while many discretionary categories struggled to gain traction. For merchants, banks...

Retail
The Grocery Run No Longer Belongs to One Retailer
July 14, 2026

A weekly grocery run seems like the perfect opportunity to fill a shopping cart with everything else a household needs. New data suggests consumers increasingly see it differently. A recent PYMNTS Intelligence report, “The Basket Breakaway: How Amazon Is Turning Walmart’s Store Traffic Into a...

Retail
The New Storefront Is the AI Conversation
July 09, 2026

Retail is getting a first-principles upgrade at the hands, or lack of them, of artificial intelligence. The shopping transformation looks less like a better eCommerce search bar and more like something out of science fiction. It’s a bot-filled operating layer that autonomously mediates between consumer...