Walmart Canada cancels grocery pickup fee

By Special to MoneySense on August 1, 2017
Estimated reading time: 1 minute

Two years after first launching the service

This article is 7 years old. Some details may be outdated.

TORONTO — Walmart Canada is cancelling a fee it charges shoppers who order groceries online for pickup in stores. The retail giant had charged customers $2.97 for the service when it launched it in July 2015 in Ottawa. The online grocery pickup service later expanded to the Greater Toronto Area, Calgary and Edmonton. The move comes as grocers brace for increasing competition, particularly online, in a business where profit margins can be thin. In June, Amazon announced a US$13.7-billion deal to buy Whole Foods, an acquisition that some industry observers say could upend the supermarket sector. Experts have said the move could force Canadian grocery chains, some of which have been slow to embrace e-commerce compared to their U.S. counterparts, to boost their online services.