Online commerce is no longer new to the South African market, with research from World Wide Worx indicating that e-commerce surpassed R130 billion in 2025 and captured close to 10% of total retail sales. Smartphone users are driving a significant portion of that growth, with around 55% of users reporting that they use their phones to shop online.
However, we are still in the early phases of mobile commerce, with a range of innovations reshaping how South African consumers discover, evaluate and buy products and services. Social commerce, artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality are changing how people shop by offering them immersive new experiences and deeper personalization.
Brands and retailers on the cutting edge are already weaving AI into their e-commerce apps and websites to improve personalization and convenience for their customers. Pick n Pay’s revamped asap! app, relaunched in 2025, uses AI search that learns a customer’s shopping behaviour to offer smarter product suggestions and streamline the browsing experience.
In the next wave of AI-enabled mobile commerce, we will see AI assistants in retail apps or messaging platforms that can answer your questions about products, suggest alternatives when items are out of stock, and guide you through complex purchases in a natural text-based or voice conversation.
