The Complete Guide to Using AI in the Retail Industry in Belgium in 2025

AI is no longer an experiment for Belgian retail - adoption leapt from 13.81% in 2023 to 24.71% in 2024 and is expected to rise in 2025, so retailers facing a booming e‑commerce market (USD 22.71 billion in 2025) are turning to AI to stay competitive.

Practical gains are already clear: PwC highlights how AI boosts decision‑making, productivity and sales across operations, while market studies show strong national growth through 2025–2031; from predictive merchandising and machine‑vision shelf analytics to NLP recommendations, these tools cut costs, reduce out‑of‑stock events and personalise offers at scale.

The bottom line for Belgian shop owners: pilot focused use cases, upskill staff, and tie AI investments to measurable KPIs so technology becomes the engine for steadier shelves and smoother customer journeys.

Learn more on Belgium's AI adoption, e‑commerce outlook and operational impact below.

“With more than 1,000 deals closed all along the year, retailers confirmed there are still expanding or optimising their retail networks to adapt to new consumers' habits and market context.”

Belgium's national AI strategy is deliberately practical and multi‑layered: it maps actions at federal and regional level around three clear pillars - creating technological impact, ensuring social and economic benefits (notably upskilling and market uptake), and building ethical, resilient governance - and treats AI as a transversal challenge that needs multi‑level coordination.

That means concrete money and programmes, from Flanders' €32 million annual action plan (€15M to help companies adopt AI, €12M for research and €5M for training and ethics) to Wallonia's DigitalWallonia4.ai and the €32M ARIAC research project, while Brussels backs research and industry through Innoviris funding and matchmaking.

The strategy bundles open data and infrastructure (Data.gov.be and regional data portals), tax and R&D incentives to

from the lab to the market

and governance work to implement the EU AI Act and a national data strategy - including pilot living labs and careful rules for public‑sector use of AI and smart surveillance.

For retailers, the takeaway is straightforward: national priorities make it easier to find partners, funding and skilled talent locally as long as projects align with the strategic pillars laid out in the Belgium AI strategy and the new federal policy frame (Belgium national AI strategy report, Belgian Federal Government Agreement 2025–2029).

The 2025 outlook for AI in Belgian retail is cautiously optimistic: adoption has already jumped (from 13.81% in 2023 to 24.71% in 2024) and is expected to rise into 2025, but most projects remain pilots rather than business‑wide transformers - PwC's Navigating AI adoption in Belgium finds 76% of organisations experimenting with AI yet only 21% have scaled it into daily operations, a gap driven by cybersecurity worries (97% of CIOs), data governance and skills shortages (only 43% invest in digital literacy).

Retail‑specific research adds another wake‑up call: while many retailers use AI regularly, only a small share are ready to scale and those with solid customer data platforms are twice as likely to see cross‑team adoption.

For Belgian shop owners the implication is practical: target one or two high‑value use cases, shore up data foundations and training, and treat security and governance as part of the ROI - otherwise dozens of promising pilots may keep humming in the background while tills and loyalty scores barely budge.

For more detail see PwC's Navigating AI adoption in Belgium and Act Legal's Trustworthy AI in Europe - Time to act (Belgium).

These projects illustrate how tailored, phased implementations can deliver quick wins, build trust, and create momentum for scaling AI.

Belgium's regulatory landscape for retail AI is now driven by the EU AI Act, a risk‑based rulebook that already banned certain practices (think emotion recognition in workplaces and

“social scoring”

- removed as of 2 February 2025) and layers heavy duties on high‑risk systems while still encouraging low‑risk innovation; practical guidance tailored to Belgian actors is collected in Act Legal's

“Trustworthy AI in Europe - Time to act (Belgium)”

(see the Belgium guide).

Key points for webshop owners and retailers: identify whether your firm is a provider or a deployer (most retailers will be deployers), compile a model inventory, classify systems by risk, and build human‑oversight, documentation and post‑market monitoring into every rollout because obligations scale with risk.

General‑purpose AI models bring extra transparency and training‑data disclosure rules that start applying from 2 August 2025, while the wider regime becomes fully enforceable from August 2026 with phased deadlines after that; non‑compliance carries steep fines (up to €35M or 7% of global turnover), so early steps matter.

For practical checklists and timelines on provider/deployer responsibilities and penalties, consult Morgan Lewis's compliance checklist and Norton Rose's operational guide to the AI Act - then treat regulation as a competitive advantage by making trustworthy AI a documented, auditable part of your retail roadmap.

Belgian retailers in 2025 are turning AI into practical shop-floor and webshop tools: hyper‑personalization and recommendation engines tailor product feeds and dynamic pricing on mobile‑first sites (58% of purchases are on smartphones), while AI‑powered demand forecasting and smart inventory reduce stockouts and waste; in physical stores computer vision now drives real‑time shelf analytics (feeding incidents, confidence scores and task lists to store teams) and shrinkage‑prevention systems flag suspicious activity to protect margins.

Conversational agents and shopping assistants cut friction in checkout flows and customer service, generative AI automates localized marketing copy and product images, and visual search plus virtual try‑ons speed discovery for fashion and home décor.

Belgian specifics matter - platform choices (Shopify ~29% market share) and payment integration (Bancontact remains dominant) shape which AI plug‑ins and checkout bots deliver the best ROI for local shops and cross‑border sellers.

The pattern is clear: start with focused, measurable pilots (personalization, inventory, loss prevention, or self‑checkout) and scale the winners so the tech actually moves turnover and customer satisfaction, not just dashboards; for Belgium market context see ClickForest's Belgium e‑commerce guide and Publicis Sapient's top generative AI retail use cases.

“If retailers aren't doing micro-experiments with generative AI, they will be left behind.”

Start your Belgian webshop AI roadmap by turning strategy into a tightly sequenced playbook: define a clear AI vision tied to measurable KPIs (revenue lift, reduced stock‑outs, faster checkout) and map which customer or operational pain points matter most; then assess data readiness, cloud and security gaps so the tech choices you make actually run on clean, accessible data (this aligns with CIO best practices for alignment and governance).

Use a staged, time‑boxed approach to avoid scope creep - a 3‑day ideation sprint to surface feasible ideas, a 6‑week phase to crystallise one high‑value use case with success metrics, and a 9‑month implementation plan to deliver a production solution - the Belgium AI Index's practical 3‑6‑9 method is built for exactly this path.

Prioritise pilots that match Belgian market realities (payments, localisation and omnichannel flows), build model inventories and compliance gates early to simplify later audits, and pick partners or platforms that let you move from proof‑of‑concept to scale while keeping governance and training in parallel.

Tie every pilot to a short, observable business outcome so momentum and funding follow success rather than promises; national programmes and regional support can then help amplify winners into full deployments across stores and web channels (see the Belgium national AI strategy for regional funding and support).

“Our approach to new tools like generative AI is to focus on making shopping easier and more convenient for our customers and members and helping our associates enjoy more satisfying and productive work.” – Walmart CEO Doug McMillon

Platform choices, payments and localisation are business-critical for Belgian e‑commerce: pick a platform that matches your scale and local checkout needs rather than the prettiest template.

For merchants planning to scale across EU borders, Shopify's ecommerce-first stack - native multi‑currency and multi‑language features, a robust app ecosystem and advanced checkout controls - makes it easier to plug in AI plugins for personalization and inventory forecasting; see Shopify's comparison of ecommerce features and multi‑currency tools for details (Shopify vs Wix ecommerce comparison of features and multi-currency tools).

If the shop is a compact, content‑led catalogue or the team needs the simplest editor, Wix keeps costs and setup friction low, but expect fewer ecommerce‑grade integrations.

Payments deserve special attention in Belgium: Bancontact remains a local checkout staple, and some hosted builders block it - community threads note that Squarespace does not support Bancontact and recommend switching platforms or embedding Shopify buttons (Squarespace Bancontact availability forum discussion).

For broader localisation and dozens of local gateways, consider payment orchestration plugins (Rapyd and similar) that add local methods quickly to Shopify or Wix and reduce friction for cross‑border shoppers (Rapyd guide to adding local payment methods on Shopify and Wix).

Practical tip: map top checkout methods for your Belgian customer segments, enable Bancontact and one strong card gateway, and prioritise a platform that lets AI tools access clean order and payment data so personalization and fraud models actually move conversion - not just dashboards.

Squarespace doesn't support bancontact

Trust, ethics and compliance are the guardrails that let Belgian retailers turn AI from a risky experiment into a durable competitive edge: start by mapping whether your firm is a provider or - more likely - a deployer, then build a model inventory, clear human‑oversight rules and documented risk assessments into every project so obligations scale with risk.

The EU AI Act already put its first rules in place on 2 February 2025 and phases in tougher duties (including transparency for large general‑purpose AI models and heavier enforcement timelines later), so combine practical steps - AI literacy for staff, data‑quality checks, and post‑market monitoring - with legal readiness rather than retrofitting governance after a pilot.

SMEs can use dedicated support such as regulatory sandboxes and simplified documentation to lower costs and test safely, while larger retailers must pay extra attention to GPAI transparency and lifecycle logging; treating compliance as a product‑management activity (not just legal paperwork) avoids the “holiday rush turned compliance nightmare” where an unlisted model suddenly faces audit.

For actionable Belgian guidance, see Act Legal Belgium guide to Trustworthy AI and the EU Small Businesses' Guide to the AI Act for SMEs and regulatory sandboxes.

“an AI system means: ‘a machine-based system that is designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy and that may exhibit adaptiveness after deployment, and that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions…'”

People, tools and vendors for Belgian retail AI should be pragmatic: combine local hiring with vendor partnerships, pick recruitment software that speaks Dutch and French and offers GDPR-ready workflows, and use platforms that include AI‑powered candidate matching, resume parsing and workflow automation so hiring keeps pace with fast pilots.

Several Belgian‑friendly ATS options appear consistently in marketplace comparisons - review a curated list of top recruitment platforms for Belgium to compare demos and trials (top recruitment software in Belgium) - and pair those hires with proven retail pilots (for example, in‑store computer vision for shelf analytics) so vendors and new hires work on the same measurable outcomes (in‑store computer vision for shelf analytics).

Practical checklist: require multilingual support and GDPR features in RFPs, insist on free trials or demos before buying, prioritise vendors with retail use‑cases and integrations to your e‑commerce stack, and start with one high‑value role (data engineer or automation specialist) plus an ATS that accelerates volume hiring during peak seasons - that way pilots can be staffed, launched and audited without becoming dusty POCs.

For Belgian retailers the next steps are practical and urgent: convert one or two high‑value pilots into measurable business outcomes (think fewer stock‑outs, faster checkouts, or dynamic pricing that actually moves the till), harden data and cybersecurity foundations ahead of EU enforcement timelines, and stitch governance into every rollout so compliance becomes an operational strength - not an afterthought; PwC report “Navigating AI adoption in Belgium” (2025) is useful here for phased adoption and people‑first change management.

Leverage national programmes and events to find partners and inspiration - for example, Interact 2025 AI in Action masterclasses in Brussels - and invest in practical upskilling so staff can use AI tools safely and productively.

Consider the Nucamp AI Essentials for Work 15-week bootcamp - register which teaches prompts, tool use, and job-based AI skills.

Start small, measure outcomes, document model inventories and human oversight early, and use each quick win to build momentum across stores and web channels before regulatory and market pressures make late adoption costly.

“These projects illustrate how tailored, phased implementations can deliver quick wins, build trust, and create momentum for scaling AI.”