Lidl is now your phone operator

The business world is going through a massive change in 2026. Traditional boundaries between different industries are completely disappearing. Companies are no longer asking how to sell more in their own category. Instead, they are asking what other services they can offer. A discount supermarket like Lidl now sells mobile phone plans, and its parent company runs a cloud computing business for governments and hospitals. In the United States, Amazon and Walmart are using weight-loss medicines to get deeper into the healthcare business. At the same time, banking apps like Revolut are turning into "super-apps" where you can buy almost anything. However, mixing different businesses doesn't always work perfectly, as seen when the cheap clothing brand Shein tried to open a physical store in a high-end Paris mall. This report explains how shopping apps, customer data, and new technology are changing the rules of global business.

The most valuable thing a store has today is its loyalty app. In the past, these apps just gave out discount coupons. Now, apps like Lidl Plus have over 100 million active users all over the world. Because millions of people open the app every week, Lidl can offer new services—like phone plans—without spending millions of dollars on advertising. Their cost to get a new customer is almost zero.

Lidl Plus also changes how many points a shopper gets based on what they buy, which gives Lidl very valuable data about how people shop. They are even testing a new service where customers can reserve products in the app before they go to the physical store. By putting many different services into one app using flexible software called "mini-apps," traditional stores are turning into powerful digital platforms.

To build these huge digital platforms, companies need a lot of money. They get this cash from their large physical store networks. The Schwarz Group, which owns Lidl and Kaufland, is a great example. They made 175.4 billion euros in 2024. They have about 595,000 workers and over 14,200 stores worldwide.