The Retail Times is a weekly newsletter covering retail tech news from Canada and around the globe.
Subscribe to R|T using the form at the bottom of this page to ensure you don’t miss out on the most important retail tech news every week!
Shopify Capital launches starter loans for United States merchants(BETAKIT)
Shopify has launched a new product line as part of Shopify Capital, offering starter loans to entrepreneurs beginning their business.
Turo, TradeRev headline first 2020 AutoTech meetup on Feb 6th(BETAKIT)
BetaKit has partnered with TradeRev on a new event series investigating the future of Canada’s AutoTech industry.
ToursByLocals snaps up its first funding, C$33M, to link sightseers with guides globally(TECHCRUNCH)
This is the first outside funding for the Vancouver, Canada-based startup, which for the past 10 years has bootstrapped its business, building it up to 1.45 million customers and some US$45 million in revenues.
Amazon and Flipkart face an antitrust investigation in India(CNN)
India’s antitrust regulator has opened an investigation into Amazon and Flipkart over allegations that the two retail giants are illegally undercutting local businesses, allegations the companies deny.
Elastic Path acquires Moltin as it looks help clients leverage e-commerce microservices(BETAKIT)
Vancouver-based Elastic Path, which looks to “future-proof” e-commerce enterprises with its API-based platform, has acquired Boston-based Moltin.
Intel debuts immersive retail tech and AREA15 deal at NRF 2020(TECHREPUBLIC)
Innovative tech art installations, robotic coffee shops and seamless checkout systems were only a few of the things on display.
Instacart upgrades its pickup service with new features, adds alcohol pickup option(TECHCRUNCH)
In total, Instacart Pickup reaches more than 50 grocery partners, like Food Lion, Gelson’s, Publix, Price Chopper, Schnucks, Shop ‘n Save, The Fresh Market, Wegmans and more.
Sequoia surge startup Klub raises $2M pre-seed funding(INC42)
40 angel investors via AngelList also participated in the round.
Amazon plans to invest $1 billion in India, and CEO Jeff Bezos said a US-India alliance will be most important this century(BUSINESSINSIDER)
His arrival in India was met by protesters who say Amazon is driving small retailers out of business by undercutting them on price.
Salesforce announces new tools to boost developer experience on Commerce Cloud(TECHCRUNCH)
Salesforce announced some new and enhanced APIs that enable developers to take advantage of features built into the Commerce Cloud platform without having to build them from scratch.
Google acquires Pointy to help local retailers compete against Amazon(VENTUREBEAT)
Google has acquired Dublin-based Pointy, which developed a solution to help traditional retailers compete with ecommerce giants like Amazon.
