Walmart adding pet telehealth benefit to Walmart+

The latest new perk in Walmart’s paid membership program will target pet owners.

The discount giant is teaming up with omnichannel pet care platform Pawp to introduce a new telehealth benefit to its pet-owning members. Starting later in 2024, members of the Walmart+ paid membership offering will have 24/7 virtual access to Pawp’s staff of veterinary professionals.

Walmart+ initially piloted Pawp as a limited-time offer in 2023. According to Walmart, the pet telehealth benefit had a high redemption rate and became Walmart+’s most successful limited-time offer of 2023. Walmart data indicates that more than 75% of Walmart+ members were pet owners as of January 2024.

Key features of Pawp for Walmart+ members include:

• Pawp is offered as a free pet telehealth service in the Walmart+ benefit suite, saving members $99 on the cost of a standalone Pawp membership.
• Veterinary staff comprised of veterinarians and licensed veterinary techs hired and trained in-house, each with at least five years clinical experience.
• 24/7 access to licensed veterinary professionals via text and video with unlimited on-demand virtual visits providing expert advice.
• Personalized post-visit care plans with product recommendations.

"Our focus has always been on evolving Walmart+ in a way that puts our members first," said Venessa Yates, senior VP and GM of Walmart+ "Seeing how well-received Pawp was as a limited-time offer, we knew it was a valuable addition that would enhance the Walmart+ experience,” “This new benefit illustrates our continued evolution, as we strive to provide seamless, time-saving and affordable solutions tailored to our members’ needs."

"At Pawp, our mission is to make high quality, convenient pet care accessible to a much larger part of the population and, for over a year now, Walmart+ has been an incredible partner in helping us realize this vision," said Marc Atiyeh, CEO of Pawp. "We’re excited to deepen this relationship by incorporating Pawp as an ongoing, first-of-its-kind pet health benefit for Walmart+ and look forward to supporting Walmart+ members with their pets care for years to come."

Walmart adds perks to Walmart+

Initially introduced in in September 2020, Walmart+ offers unlimited free delivery on orders of $35 or more, gasoline discounts of up to five cents a gallon and access to the chain’s Scan & Go app, which allows shoppers to avoid checkout lines by scanning items in the store and checkout using Walmart Pay.

Walmart has been bulking up Walmart+ with several different promotions in the past two years. These include special cash back offers for members that use the WalmartPlusTravel.com site for travel-related bookings Walmart operates with Expedia.

In another example, the discount giant makes its InHome delivery service, which delivers groceries straight to a customer’s kitchen or garage fridge, available as an optional add-on within the Walmart+ program for $10 less than previous annual pricing when Walmart+ and InHome were separate memberships.

And in March 2022, Walmart made the program available free to all full- and part-time Walmart U.S. associates working in the company’s stores, distribution centers and fulfillment centers. This added nearly 1.6 million members to the offering.

At that time, the company also began also collaborating with the Spotify music streaming platform to offer a special promotion for Walmart+ members. New and existing Walmart+ members can receive six months of the Spotify Premium content streaming service for free.

Headquartered in Bentonville, Ark., Walmart Inc. operates more than 10,500 stores and numerous e-commerce websites in 19 countries.