Walmart Takes on Amazon With Boost to Same-Day Delivery Offerings
Walmart is looking at a new way to take on Amazon by juicing up same-day deliveries for its third-party sellers. With 4,605 stores in the U.S. as of December 31, 2025, the company is experimenting in Dallas, opening room in the back of locations to hold merchandise for its third-party marketplace sellers.
"Starting in a few markets, we'll soon be offering a select assortment of marketplace items through the pick-up and delivery experience customers already know and love," Manish Joneja, senior vice-president of Walmart US Marketplace and Walmart Fulfillment Services, told The Financial Times.
"It's an intentional test that will help us learn and scale over time."
Choosing only select items is a practical necessity. Walmart's marketplace platform hosts about 500 million items offered by third-party sellers, according to the FT. The third parties typically keep their goods either on their own premises or in Walmart-owned warehouses. Most deliveries from those warehouses take a day or two. Direct shipments from the sellers can take longer.
Making products available on a same-day basis reduces a major source of friction in online sales, increasing the likelihood of closing a transaction and adding a bit more to overall revenue. The more readily customers purchase, the more likely the third parties will continue doing business with Walmart. Amazon already offers third-party sellers on its own marketplace and same-day deliveries.
These marketplaces can be major sources of revenue. Amazon's 2025 annual report shows that last year, third-party seller services, which include commissions, fulfillment and shipping fees and other services to such sellers, was 24% of the company's consolidated net sales, second only to online store sales and ahead of AWS cloud computing services. Sales of advertising services to sellers, vendors, publishers and authors made up 9.6% of the share.
"I'm really pleased with the progress of our marketplace business," said Walmart CFO John Rainey at the J.P. Morgan Retail Round Up Forum on April 8, 2026. "[From] a total revenue perspective, it's growing roughly at a 20% rate."
Growth rates don't necessarily offer enough perspective. The FT quoted some statistics from eMarketer, noting that out of $483 billion in total net sales at Walmart, $14 billion came from the marketplace.
"Walmart relies heavily on stores to fulfil orders," Sky Canaves, an analyst at eMarketer, told the FT. "Now, that means that it can only rapidly fulfil orders for what's available in its stores. And those are the items that it carries, generally not the marketplace items."
Source: GlobeSt/ALM