Commentary: Walmart primes new two-day shipping program

Walmart offered its own version of the Amazon Prime Day online sales event last summer, and now is directly taking on Amazon Prime.



The discount giant is piloting a two-day version of its paid ShippingPass unlimited online delivery program. Normally, customers pay $50 per year for the ability to obtain three-day delivery of more than 1 million items Walmart.com with no additional fees.



ShippingPass, which itself is still in testing mode, launched in May 2015. The service costs about half of the $99 annual Amazon Prime membership fee, with customers trading one day of shipping for a lower cost. Interestingly, the new two-day version is being offered for one dollar less than the three-day version, or $49 per year. However, Walmart has the advantage of fulfilling from its network of thousands of local stores, as well as not offering other digital features of Amazon Prime such as content streaming.



Walmart’s online shipping program has no minimum requirements for number or cost of items ordered and also accepts free returns. Much like Amazon’s secrecy around the performance of Prime, Walmart has so far not broken out details about ShippingPass metrics.



In addition to offering its own July online sales event, Walmart has also treaded on Amazon’s turf by providing online grocery delivery and free cloud hosting services, as well as by testing delivery drones. Testing out a paid two-day shipping program is the discounter’s most direct challenge yet to Amazon’s online supremacy.



While Walmart may never have quite as broad an online assortment as that of Amazon, it does currently offer about 7 million items online. This gives the retailer a lot of room to expand ShippingPass, and if it can maintain a price that is 50% lower it should be able to capture significant marketshare.