Q3 2026 Retail Technology: AI Moves Deeper Into Retail Decisions

As part of Retail Insider Reports, this Q3 2026 Retail Technology Report analyzes Q3 2026 developments in Canadian retail technology and payments. Drawing on Retail Insider coverage, industry research, company disclosures, government data, and broader market signals, it identifies key dynamics shaping artificial intelligence, connected retail systems, digital commerce, and checkout. These reports are designed to deliver executive-level insights across major retail sectors and can be accessed through the Retail Insider Report Hub.

This report examines technologies enabling Canadian retail, including POS systems, AI, ecommerce platforms, retail software, customer engagement, loyalty technology, cybersecurity, automation, and digital innovation. This report examines payment technologies, point-of-sale systems, fintech, digital wallets, payment processing, checkout innovation, fraud prevention, and retail financial technology.

Executive Summary

Canadian retailers moved artificial intelligence and other digital technologies deeper into operating decisions during the third quarter of 2026, with applications extending from merchandise planning and product discovery to payments, cross-border commerce and distribution centres.

Canadian Tire used customer occasions to inform assortment and merchandising decisions across its banners. Instacart introduced an AI grocery assistant capable of turning conversations and recipes into personalized carts for Canadian shoppers, while Loblaw expanded computer-vision technology used to automate vehicle and freight processing at distribution centres. New research also showed a growing number of Canadians using AI somewhere in the shopping process, while retailers continued investing in payment choice, membership programs and systems connecting digital and physical transactions.

The deployments were at different stages of maturity. Some were already performing defined operational tasks, while others remained early products, pilots or emerging customer behaviours. The more useful measure is what the technology changes, including product availability, merchandising decisions, conversion, processing time, operating cost and the ease of completing a purchase.

Retail technology moved into more specific Canadian operating applications during Q3, while data quality and system integration remained important constraints.

• Canadian Tire continued applying its MOSaiC retail intelligence platform to merchandising, using sales and Triangle Rewards data alongside weather, seasonality and local events. Back-to-school provided an early example of the company identifying assortment gaps and coordinating Canadian Tire, SportChek and Mark’s around a common shopping occasion.
• Instacart launched Clementine for most Canadian and U.S. customers, allowing conversations, recipes and lists to become personalized grocery carts connected to store inventory and fulfilment. Early larger-basket observations were not disclosed as Canadian results and do not establish causation.
• Loblaw expanded EAIGLE’s computer-vision gate automation across multiple distribution-centre yards after reporting early improvements in processing time, driver experience and data accuracy.
• Salesforce research found 39% of Canadian shoppers surveyed had used AI to help them shop during the previous 12 months, although only approximately 11% to 12% began their shopping journey with AI.
• Only 30% of Canadian retailers in the Salesforce research reported fully unified customer data across sales, marketing, commerce and service.
• Interac announced that Global Payments would enable Konek across its Canadian merchant network, expanding access to account-based payments while credit cards remain the largest payment method by Canadian transaction value.
• Shopify expanded Managed Markets to eligible Canadian merchants, while Walmart and Amazon added membership and convenience features intended to reduce friction around digital purchasing.

Retail Insider Coverage

Canadian Tire Uses AI to Rethink Merchandising Around Customer Needs

Canadian Tire provided one of the quarter’s strongest Canadian examples of artificial intelligence moving into a core retail decision. Its MOSaiC retail intelligence platform, developed with Microsoft on Azure, combines internal sales and Triangle Rewards information with inputs including seasonality, weather, holidays and local events. The system is intended to identify customer needs associated with particular occasions and inform assortment, promotions and merchandising across Canadian Tire, Mark’s and SportChek.

Canadian Tire said an earlier MOSaiC pilot identified more than 1,000 distinct life occasions where its retail system could potentially serve customers. In 2026, retail and digital teams began applying those insights to merchandise assortments, store and online experiences and personalized promotions.

Back-to-school became an important test. Management described assortment gaps ranging from approximately $500 Chromebooks to fans for university residences, while Canadian Tire, SportChek and Mark’s coordinated merchandising and marketing around the broader shopping occasion. The approach allows the company to examine demand across banners from the customer’s perspective. Someone preparing for school or university may need products sold by several Canadian Tire businesses without viewing those purchases through the corporate boundaries separating the banners.

SportChek and Mark’s products appeared in the Canadian Tire flyer during the back-to-school program, while personalized offers and digital content were organized around identified needs. Holiday shopping was named as the next major application.

Canadian Tire is also preparing for customers who begin shopping outside its own digital properties. Management said it was adding shopping lists, FAQs and practical product information intended to help external AI systems understand and recommend its products. MOSaiC helps Canadian Tire interpret customer needs, while better product information helps outside systems interpret Canadian Tire’s assortment. Both depend on useful, current information moving between retail systems.

The company has not disclosed a separate sales contribution attributable to MOSaiC. Planned integration of search, carts and payments across banners also remains under development.

Instacart Brings Conversational Grocery Shopping to Canada

Instacart moved AI closer to the consumer in September with the introduction of Clementine, its conversational grocery shopping assistant. Available to most Canadian and U.S. Instacart customers at launch, Clementine can turn a conversation, grocery list or recipe into a personalized cart. Customers can use it to plan meals, find recipes, explore products and add suggested ingredients directly to a shopping list or cart.

The connection between recommendation and inventory is particularly important in grocery. Instacart’s catalogue, promotion, inventory and fulfilment infrastructure allows a suggestion to be connected with products available from the customer’s selected store. Instacart reported that early Clementine orders contained more items than its typical baskets. The company did not disclose that result specifically for Canada, and the available information does not establish that Clementine caused the larger baskets.

The launch nevertheless represents an AI shopping service already available to Canadian consumers inside a commerce platform capable of moving a recommendation toward an actual order.

Calgary Co-op Tests Digital Grocery Economics

Calgary Co-op introduced Instacart’s Storefront Pro and offered marketplace purchases without item-price markups. Instacart has said participating retailers bear the cost associated with removing those markups. The arrangement addresses a practical issue in grocery e-commerce: customers may value digital convenience while remaining sensitive to differences between online and in-store prices. Instacart’s broader claims around retention or basket size cannot establish a Calgary-specific result, but the partnership provides a Canadian example of technology and customer value being addressed together.

Helios Targets Independent Retailers

Montreal-based Helios AI had three active clients when Retail Insider interviewed its founders in July. Its thingsIQ platform uses information from retailers’ existing systems to support inventory, pricing and assortment decisions. Helios was targeting 50 clients by year-end, a goal rather than an achieved customer base. The business represents an effort to provide smaller retailers with analytical capabilities without requiring the internal technology resources available to larger companies.

AI Changes Product Discovery Before It Changes Checkout

Salesforce research discussed with Retail Insider in September found that 39% of Canadian shoppers surveyed had used AI to help them shop during the previous 12 months. Approximately 11% to 12% said they began their shopping journey with AI. Price comparison and finding deals were the leading uses, followed by research and recommendations. Those behaviours make accurate product descriptions, availability and pricing increasingly relevant outside a retailer’s own website or app.

The findings do not establish that AI has captured a corresponding share of Canadian retail transactions or displaced conventional search. Salesforce’s Caila Schwartz told Retail Insider that third-party AI was not yet a significant purchasing engine.

Shopify’s global results provide additional context. The company said AI-driven traffic and orders had tripled year over year in Q2, while emphasizing that the channel remained small relative to its overall merchandise volume. Traditional search continued to grow and represented roughly one-third of storefront sessions. No separate Canadian result was disclosed. The evidence points to AI emerging as an additional discovery route while established channels continue to account for substantial retail traffic.

AI Creates an Attribution Problem

A shopper can conduct extensive research inside an AI conversation, compare products and narrow a decision before arriving at a retailer’s website. Conventional analytics may capture the eventual visit without showing the conversation that influenced it. “If the discovery is staying in the conversation, we don’t have visibility into any of that,” Schwartz told Retail Insider.

Retailers accustomed to evaluating search, social, email and paid acquisition through referral and conversion data may therefore see only part of the path to purchase as more discovery occurs inside third-party AI systems. Retailers also need to distinguish human shopping behaviour from machine activity. Salesforce forecast that AI agents could account for 20% of holiday e-commerce traffic, but that figure referred substantially to bots and crawlers interacting with retail sites. It was not a forecast that one in five purchases would be completed autonomously. AI-assisted research, AI-generated website traffic, AI-created carts and an agent completing a transaction represent different stages of adoption and should not be measured as though they are equivalent.

Better AI Requires Better Retail Data

Salesforce found that only 30% of Canadian retailers surveyed had fully unified customer data across sales, marketing, commerce and service. Fragmented information can make personalization inconsistent and make it harder to determine whether new tools are improving customer outcomes. The same dependency appears across several Q3 developments. Canadian Tire needs reliable sales, loyalty and product information to identify customer occasions. Instacart requires accurate catalogue and inventory information to turn meal planning into a purchasable cart. External AI systems need current descriptions, pricing and availability to make useful recommendations.

International research provides a similar caution, although it should not be interpreted as Canadian adoption evidence. A DOSS survey of 230 U.S. consumer packaged goods operations leaders found that 40% were using AI, while 14% reported meaningful efficiency improvements, with product-information and coordination problems among the identified constraints. More capable technology does not resolve inaccurate or fragmented underlying information. The quality and consistency of retail data becomes more consequential as additional decisions depend on it.

Loblaw Expands AI Behind the Store

Some of the clearest retail applications of AI are largely invisible to customers. Loblaw and Canadian technology company EAIGLE announced in September that they were expanding computer-vision gate automation across multiple Loblaw distribution-centre yards.

EAIGLE’s technology validates vehicles and captures freight information in real time while connecting with existing warehouse, transportation, yard-management and enterprise systems. The expanded rollout follows early results that the companies said reduced processing times, improved the driver experience and increased data accuracy. The announcement did not quantify financial savings, but the task is defined: vehicles need to be identified, freight information captured and validated, and that information passed into systems controlling the distribution operation.

The application shows how AI can affect retail performance without appearing in the customer journey. Distribution throughput, data accuracy and vehicle processing ultimately sit behind product availability and supply-chain cost.

Walmart and Amazon Target Repeat-Purchase Friction

Walmart+ launched in Canada in June, making Canada the membership program’s first market outside the United States. Canadian benefits include store delivery, Walmart.ca shipping and other services intended to increase the value of an ongoing customer relationship. Walmart International e-commerce grew 19% in the reported quarter, with Canada among contributing markets, although the company did not disclose a separate Canadian growth rate.

Amazon added Amazon Family and Add to Delivery for Canadian Prime members during Q3. Amazon Family allows selected benefits to be shared with another adult while maintaining separate accounts, while Add to Delivery lets members add eligible products to an upcoming shipment without another shipping charge. No measured Canadian retention or spending increase was disclosed for the features. Their role is narrower: reducing recurring friction around household accounts, delivery and repeat purchases.

Shopify Expands Cross-Border Infrastructure for Canadian Merchants

Shopify extended Managed Markets to eligible Canadian merchants during the quarter, using Global-e’s merchant-of-record infrastructure for supported international transactions. The service can handle functions including duties, taxes, local payment methods and aspects of international shipping, reducing some of the administrative complexity facing Canadian merchants selling into other countries.

Access is subject to eligibility and business-model requirements. Managed Markets also carries transaction fees in addition to relevant Shopify Payments and currency-conversion costs, so simplified administration does not remove the economics associated with cross-border selling. Merchants still need suitable products, customer acquisition, inventory and reliable fulfilment. The service addresses part of the infrastructure required after an international customer decides to purchase.

Broader Industry Coverage

Descartes Applies AI to Shipment Tracking

Waterloo-based Descartes Systems Group said AI agents were being used to initiate shipment tracking and obtain delivery information, reducing some manual activity. A reported 26% sequential increase applied specifically to tracking initiated with agent assistance, which remained a small portion of MacroPoint’s overall volume. The growth rate therefore describes an emerging workflow instead of the scale of AI across the broader business.

Descartes also described demand for trade information, compliance and audit records despite pressure on freight activity, highlighting the role of operational information as sourcing and cross-border requirements become more complicated.

Konek Expands Canadian Payment Choice

Interac announced September 29 that Global Payments would enable Konek across its Canadian merchant network, giving thousands of businesses the opportunity to offer account-based payments alongside cards. The rollout begins through Global Payments’ API before expanding into additional online checkout and hosted payment solutions. Konek, powered by Interac and supported by participating Canadian financial institutions, can allow eligible customers to pay using financial-institution-linked options. Staples Canada had previously become its first national merchant.

Global Payments’ latest research placed digital wallets at 32% of Canadian e-commerce transaction value in 2025, compared with 46% for credit cards. At physical points of sale, credit cards accounted for 51%, debit 23% and digital wallets 13%.

The figures represent a 2025 baseline published during Q3 and measure transaction value instead of purchase count. Payment choice is expanding, while cards continue to account for a substantial share of spending across channels.

Modern Checkout Depends on Connected Systems

Payment choice is one part of checkout modernization. Transactions increasingly need to connect with online orders, customer accounts, inventory, fulfilment and returns. A Coresight Research study sponsored by Aptos surveyed 150 retail decision-makers globally and found that 85% of retailers that had recently modernized point-of-sale systems said the investment met or exceeded return expectations. Integration was the most commonly identified implementation obstacle.

The findings are international, vendor-sponsored and self-reported, so they are not a Canadian measure of POS performance. They reinforce an operating issue visible throughout the quarter: individual technologies become more useful when information moves reliably between systems.

Trust Becomes More Important as AI Approaches Payment

AI recommending a product, assembling a cart and completing a purchase involve progressively greater levels of authority. An autonomous agent authorized to transact raises questions around identity, spending limits, authentication, disputes and responsibility when something goes wrong. Payments companies are beginning to address those issues as they prepare for more automated commerce.

Interac has emphasized financial-institution-backed authentication and customer control around Konek, while payment-industry discussions of agentic commerce increasingly focus on determining whether AI-initiated transactions are properly authorized. The Canadian evidence available during Q3 supports growing AI-assisted shopping and discovery. It does not establish autonomous purchasing as mainstream Canadian behaviour.

As AI moves closer to checkout, retailers and payment providers will need to distinguish legitimate delegated purchases from fraud while keeping authorized transactions straightforward for customers.

Canadian E-Commerce Continues to Grow Unevenly

Statistics Canada reported approximately $5.5 billion in retail e-commerce sales during July, down 3.5% from June but 6% higher than a year earlier. The monthly decline does not establish a reversal in digital adoption, while the year-over-year increase does not demonstrate that any particular technology investment is producing a return. The figures provide market context for an established digital retail channel continuing to fluctuate as retailers invest in the systems surrounding it.

Editor’s Take & Outlook

Outlook: Operating Results Become the Test

The next phase of retail technology adoption will require more evidence of operating results. Canadian Tire’s MOSaiC will become more meaningful as the company demonstrates whether occasion-based merchandising improves assortment, availability, promotions or customer spending. Instacart’s early Clementine basket observations are worth following, while retailers will need better ways to determine whether AI-assisted discovery generates incremental customers and purchases that conventional attribution may miss.

Konek’s expansion through Global Payments will provide another measure of customer payment adoption. Loblaw’s distribution rollout can be evaluated through processing time, errors, throughput and operating cost, while data quality will remain a constraint across customer-facing and operational applications.

Adoption rates and traffic growth show where behaviour may be changing. The stronger test is whether technology produces a better retail decision, transaction or operating result.

Editor’s Take

Q3 produced credible examples of technology moving into everyday Canadian retail processes. Canadian Tire is applying AI to assortment and merchandising decisions, Instacart is connecting conversational planning with grocery carts, Loblaw is automating distribution-centre processes, and payment and commerce platforms are reducing friction around checkout and international selling.

These applications depend on reliable information and connected systems. AI recommendations need accurate inventory, occasion-based merchandising requires useful demand data, cross-border checkout depends on product and shipping information, and automated distribution processes require freight records that connect with existing operations.

The growth figures surrounding AI still require context. Consumer experimentation with AI does not establish an equivalent share of purchases, rapid traffic growth can begin from a small base, and forecasts for machine traffic should not be confused with consumers delegating purchases to autonomous agents.

The strongest Q3 deployments addressed identifiable retail problems. As the technology becomes less novel, better merchandising decisions, stronger availability and conversion, fewer errors, lower operating costs and easier transactions will matter more than the presence of AI itself.

Representative Articles

• Canadian Tire Prepares for AI Shopping as Retail Strategy Evolves — Aug 20, 2026
• Instacart launches AI grocery assistant Clementine in Canada, U.S. — Sep 10, 2026
• Helios AI Seeks to Bring Demand Intelligence to Independent Retailers — Jul 7, 2026
• Nearly 4 in 10 Canadian Shoppers Are Using AI for Shopping: Salesforce — Sep 10, 2026
• EAIGLE, Loblaw expand AI partnership at distribution centres — Sep 17, 2026
• Shopify Expands Cross-Border Ecommerce Tools for Canadian Retailers — Aug 19, 2026
• Digital wallets account for nearly one-third of Canadian online spending: Global Payments — Aug 12, 2026
• Retailers report stronger-than-expected returns from modern POS systems: Aptos — Sep 14, 2026
• Rising costs and supply chain volatility put consumer goods brands under growing pressure: DOSS — Jul 14, 2026
• Amazon launches Amazon Family and Add to Delivery for Prime members in Canada — Jul 24, 2026
• Walmart+ Takes Bigger Role as Walmart Expands Canadian Digital Strategy — Aug 24, 2026

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