Business

Major update to Sixty60 in South Africa

Staff Writer

 ·9 Apr 2026

South Africa’s biggest retailer, the Shoprite Group, has launched a new “Smart AI” shopping assistant for its Sixty60 platform.

According to the group, the assistant, named Pixie, will be personalised for every user and designed to predict what individual customers need and when they need it.

The system will pitch recommendations, which will be displayed to users in a new interface where they can swipe to browse the products.

Swiping up removes the item, and swiping down adds it to their basket—moving away from previous methods of searching and scrolling catalogues to find regular or relevant products.

The retailer said that Pixie also presents customers with personalised offers based on what they actually buy, rather than random deals.

It added that future plans will see the assistant becoming more “helpful”, extending beyond recommendations.

This could see it automatically reorder household essentials or even plan weekly meals based on a customer’s budget or what’s in their pantry, it said.

“At its core, Pixie learns from how each customer shops,” the group said.

“Based on individual purchase habits, restocking patterns and preferences, it surfaces only relevant product recommendations, making it easier to find and reorder the things customers buy regularly.”

“Pixie is like a little friend, assisting each customer quietly in the background…Shopping used to be something you did. But now, it’s something Pixie handles for you,” it said.

Shoprite noted that Pixie was developed by its in-house R&D segment, ShopriteX, through a team of product designers, data scientists, machine learning engineers and software developers.

Like the Sixty60 platform itself, Pixie is local technology, developed by a South African team for South African shoppers, it said.

The group also noted that the personalisation engine behind the AI assistant is its Xtra Savings rewards programme. This means that the assistant will “get smarter with every shop”.

However, the retailer stressed that the system is built “on a foundation of privacy and trust” and never compromises individual customer data.

The group said that the AI assistant will launch in beta with Xtra Savings Plus members first, with the experimental service rolling out to the Sixty60 app from Thursday, 9 April 2026.