Earlier this month, we had the surprising news that OpenAI was going to scale back its support for an integrated checkout within ChatGPT. First reported by The Information, the decision marks a sharp reversal on the tech firm’s initial retail plans announced in September last year.

The Information report said OpenAI was not seeing many people use the functionality and that just a dozen of the millions of merchants linked to launch partner Shopify had been enrolled. Users will still be able to potentially checkout without leaving ChatGPT, but only if retailers or other vendors launch a third-party app within ChatGPT (grocery tech firm Instacart is one such example). For the most part, though, shoppers deep in AI research are probably going to end up being directed to retailer’s site.

We tracked how many retailers were committing to these AI features as part of the Digital Capability Index report we launched earlier this month. At the time of data gathering (last autumn), there were six that had publicly expressed support for agentic shopping, while a further three had committed to integrated checkout. Those numbers have grown since, with John Lewis committing just last week to a full embrace of the AI future. 

Given so few retailers were on it, it’s hard to definitively say that nobody wants integrated checkout as it hardly got a fair whack. Google seems just as committed to the proposition. However, ‘ambivalent’ is the right word for the British public’s views on the subject, at least according to a YouGov poll at the start of the year. Two-thirds said they would trust AI to compare products and prices, but just 11% said they would trust it to complete a purchase on their behalf. Payments providers like Visa are working to bring some more trust by working with banks on “agentic payments”.

John Lewis’ partner in AI-readiness is Commercetools and I spoke with CIO and co-founder Dirk Hoerig for our Charts of the Week, to digest all of the above. His take is that that we are at “day zero” of agentic commerce and points to the millions upon millions of daily shopping queries in ChatGPT and elsewhere to show how important it is for brands to make themselves ready for it. A more sceptical take came from Forrester’s Sucharita Kodali, who said that while AI’s role as a discovery platform is undeniable, integrated checkout is.

Labour market figures fresh out this morning show the unemployment rate held at the post-pandemic high of 5.2% in November to January, but this was lower than the 5.3% that economists had expected. Payroll unemployment was up by 6,000 between December and January (and provisional figures suggest a 20,000 rise between January and February). Average wage growth slowed to 3.3% in the three months to January.

The BRC also looked at retail jobs using the four-quarter average for December 2025 and found that there were 2.81 million. That is 68,000 fewer positions than in 2024.

When routine bites hard… JD.com has launched its Joybuy shopping service in the UK and five other European markets. Most eye-catching from the launch was the free same-day delivery (before 11pm) on orders over £29 placed before 11am. Named Double 11, the service is available in London and a handful of other English cities. Spending £3.99 per month will get you unlimited free delivery. George MacDonald has your back if you’re asking the question I am: “Is this going to cause Amazon some mischief?” (He put it more politely.) While Megan Robinson interviewed UK MD Matthew Nobbs about the launch. 

Over on Threadneedle Street… the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee is meeting today. The consensus of economists seems to have shifted away from an interest rate cut, largely thanks to the war in the Middle East and the subsequent oil and gas price surge. In terms of the wider impact, data put together by financial information service Moneyfacts shows the average new mortgage is nearly £800 more expensive than it was before the war. That’s way short of the price jumps seen after the Liz Truss mini-budget, but not ideal. 

Yikes! UK future consumer sentiment dropped by 8.2 points in March, according to GlobalData, the deepest month-on-month fall since lockdown.

Mine’s a Lucky Saint, mine’s an Athletic Brew. Alcohol-free (AF) beer is now so pervasive that it deserves a place in the hypothetical shopping basket used to calculate inflation. Also in are dash-cams (hello Currys) and pet grooming (hello Pets at Home) and hummus (hello, um, everyone). Out are sheets of wrapping paper, replaced by rolls of wrapping paper (hello Card Factory). The new basket is coming alongside a switch from manual collection to supermarket scanner data for half the grocery market. 

Enjoy a £3,000 bonus for hiring a person aged between 18 and 24 if they have been searching for a job for six months or more. Companies will be hiring from a pool of around 60,000 individuals, the government said, as it set out its £1bn plan to tackle youth unemployment. SMEs will also get £2,000 for every new apprentice they employ. BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson welcomed the scheme but said the government “risks undermining its own ambition” through other policies like the Employment Rights Act. 

But what about Gen X? George MacDonald has picked up on some sentiment that Gen X, people born between 1965 and 1980, are also struggling in the job market with a perception shared in many a LinkedIn post that there is limited appetite for mid-career hires. In reality, the data does not quite seem to suggest the cohort are particularly hard done by, but there are loads of fascinating insights about the generation in his feature.

If it walks like a supermarket and talks like a supermarket… the Competition and Markets Authority is opening a consultation on whether Aldi and Lidl are “large grocery retailers”, rather than “limited assortment discounters”, which is what they’ve previously been classed as. This all relates to the 2010 Controlled Land Order, which specifies that large grocery retailers cannot put “restrictive covenants” in property deals. Such covenants could allow a businesses to block the opening of competitors nearby. 

Grim. Over 14 million people have witnessed violence or abuse against retail workers in the last year, according to new survey data from the BRC.

Recent financial updates (all changes on the same period the year before unless stated):

  • DFS (+8.6% revenue, 26 weeks to December 28, 2025)
  • Lululemon (-12% net income, year to February 1, 2026)
  • Wickes (+5.9% revenues, year to December 27, 2025)
  • Gymshark (+7% revenues, year to July 31, 2025)

That’s your lot. Any tips, comments, questions email george.arnett@retail-week.com.

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