Walmart mimics Amazon, adds free two-day shipping for third-party sellers

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This holiday season, Walmart’s is offering free two-day shipping for hundreds of third-party sellers. In doing so, millions of more products are now available with free shipping.

In a Tuesday press release, Walmart says it’s making two significant changes to the marketplace shopping experience. The most significant part of this is working with marketplace sellers to make millions of items available with free two-day shipping and no membership fees. There’s also a simplified returns process for items purchased from marketplace sellers.

The company’s two-day shipping promotion with no membership fees was first launched in 2016. Walmart says, “customers love the offer and the ability to get products quickly without having to pay an annual fee.”

The new return process allows customers to print out labels from the Walmart website. Additionally, marketplace items can soon be returned to any Walmart store. In-store returns for these items begin in mid-November.

More about the new return policy

It explains, “And, we’re not stopping at simplifying the return process online. To make it even more convenient for the 140 million customers who shop our stores weekly, we are launching the ability to return eligible marketplace items in a store. With 90 percent of Americans living within 10 miles of a Walmart store, we think this is going to be a real game changer for our customers.”

Free shipping is always nice, and this should help Walmart better compete with Amazon, which offers free shipping to Amazon Prime customers.

It has been a busy time for Walmart. Just weeks ago, the company announced a new partnership with PayPal that will give Walmart customers access to PayPal financial services and products in stores.

As part of the collaboration, Walmart stores will now offer PayPal cash in and cash out services. Additionally, PayPal Cash MasterCard customers will now be able to access their cash balance at in-store service desks, ATMs, and cash registers.

Will you take advantage of Walmart’s new offering for marketplace purchases? Let us know below. 

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