Walmart takes the lead over Amazon in same-day-drug deliveryWalmart takes the lead over Amazon in same-day-drug delivery

Walmart is expanding its Same-Day Pharmacy Delivery service to 49 states, further connecting its pharmaceutical sales to the retail portion of its business, the company announced Friday. 

The move follows a major shakeup in the retail giant’s pharmacy business in April, when Walmart decided to shutter 51 health clinics and discontinue its telehealth operations due to their unprofitability. 

Walmart’s announcement beats Amazon Pharmacy in the same-day pharmaceutical delivery game, as the Seattle-based online retailer powerhouse builds its pharmacy fulfillment centers over the course of 2025. 

Six months after shutting down those services, Walmart changed course with the launch of the Same-Day Delivery program in select states—Arkansas, Missouri, New York, Nevada, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.

The Bentonville, Ark.-based company said the delivery service “one of Walmart’s most expansive technology undertakings, is a tech-powered store-to-door service, using a combination of highly complex in-store and cloud-based technology platforms, AI capabilities, and a new geospatial platform.”

The delivery service is made available through the retailer’s AI-powered platform, Spark Delivery, which uses geospatial technology to more efficiently organize delivery services for the company. 

The delivery platform defines delivery catchments, or delivery areas, which “are customized for each store using customer insights and external data,” and outperforms more manual methods of using zip codes and store distance, Walmart said.   

“This technology recently powered the expansion of regular delivery to 12 million more households and is now enabling Walmart to extend this new offering to even more customers,” the company said. 

The expansion of its pharmacy delivery program comes at a time of major change in the pharmacy industry, with players like Walgreens and CVS struggling to compete against big players like Amazon, Kroger, and others. 

Kroger made headlines in March with the announcement that it was selling its specialty pharmacy business CarelonRX, a subsidiary of Elevance Health. That $464 million deal closed on Oct. 4, according to the grocer’s third-quarter earnings report.

Meanwhile, Amazon continues to leverage its size by opening 20 brick-and-mortar locations this year in metro areas including Dallas, Boston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and San Diego. 

The online retail goliath said in October that roughly 45% of customers should be able to access Amazon’s same-day pharmaceutical delivery program by the end of 2025.