Sources: Walmart+, a $98/year Amazon Prime rival, will launch in July, with same-day delivery, discounts at Walmart gas stations, reserved delivery slots, more
After announcing a number of improvements to its online shopping experience, Walmart is now taking aim at Amazon Prime membership. Tweets: @delrey , @delrey , and @delrey Tweets: Jason Del Rey / @delrey : The timing could offer Walmart opportunities as online grocery sales have surged recently, while unemployed shoppers could be attracted to discounts on necessities like fuel. At the same time, could be challenging to ask a mass customer base to spend on a membership right now. https://twitter.com/... Jason Del Rey / @delrey : NEW: Walmart's answer to Amazon Prime — Walmart+ — will launch in July. For $98 a year, perks will include same-day delivery of groceries & other items, discounts at Walmart gas stations, reserved delivery slots, and eventually a branded credit card. https://www.vox.com/... Jason Del Rey / @delrey : As I previously reported, more than half of Walmart's top-spending families are currently Amazon Prime members. Can Walmart+ curb that trend? And can it convince those who already signed on with Prime that the extra $21 a year isn't worth it? https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This is Walmart's third run at a Prime clone, and the corpus shows why the earlier ones stalled: the 2015 invitation-only, $50/year three-day delivery service never scaled, and ShippingPass, opened to all US customers in 2016 at $49/year, was backed by a $2B regional network of eight mega-warehouses yet still didn't stick.
The difference this time is sequencing: sources reported in February that Walmart would start publicly testing Walmart+ within a month, and the program now surfaces with same-day delivery, reserved slots, and fuel discounts just as online grocery demand surges — though Vox notes the tension of asking a mass customer base to pay for a membership while unemployment is high.
First-order effects
- Walmart puts a recurring-revenue layer directly against Amazon Prime, betting its store footprint and grocery volume can justify $98/year where two-day shipping alone could not.
- Unemployed shoppers become an explicit target via fuel discounts on necessities, while the same economic conditions make the upfront membership ask harder for Walmart's broad base.
Second-order effects
- Amazon faces a rival whose same-day grocery promise attacks Prime's freshest moat rather than its legacy shipping one, pressuring Amazon to respond on delivery speed or grocery bundling.
- Walmart's own prior failures — ShippingPass priced at less than half of Walmart+'s fee — set an internal bar: the new service must prove the added perks convert, or it becomes another retired experiment.
Third-order effects
- If Walmart+ holds, US retail consolidates around dueling paid-membership ecosystems where delivery speed, fuel, and groceries are bundled into one subscription — and retailers without a comparable program compete at a structural discount disadvantage.
- The pattern across 2015, 2016, and 2020 suggests Walmart treats Prime rivalry as a capability-building cycle, each iteration retaining more infrastructure than the last.
The trend: US mass-market retail is reorganizing around paid membership bundles, with Walmart iterating toward parity with Amazon Prime after two failed attempts.