Walmart flipped a switch last Thursday that it had never flipped before. Walmart+, the membership program it built to fight Amazon Prime, went live in Canada on June 4. That is the first time Walmart+ has run anywhere outside the United States.
The offer is aggressive. It runs $8.97 a month or $89 a year for unlimited same-day delivery, free shipping with no order minimum, and a Crave streaming subscription bundled in. For context, $8.97 is roughly what a single Walmart delivery used to cost. Every existing Delivery Pass subscriber got upgraded into the new tier automatically.
A membership bundle in Canada might sound like it has nothing to do with your store. It does. This is Walmart exporting the exact flywheel that turned Amazon into a two-trillion-dollar machine, and the way the big marketplaces lock in shoppers sets the price every independent store pays to reach those same shoppers. I run my niche stores off-marketplace on purpose, and moves like this are why. At Ecommerce Paradise I track these shifts because they change the math on where your next customer comes from.
Here is what launched, why Walmart is doing it now, and what it changes for a high-ticket store owner.
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What Happened
Walmart Canada announced Walmart+ on Thursday, June 4, calling it a first-of-its-kind membership that goes beyond delivery, according to Retail Insider. The price is $8.97 per month or $89 per year, the same annual figure Canada’s older Delivery Pass charged.
At launch, members get unlimited free same-day delivery from store on orders over $35, free shipping with no order minimum on thousands of items from Walmart.ca, and a Crave Standard with Ads subscription at no extra cost. Express Delivery, which arrives in two hours or less, is discounted for members too. Walmart runs more than 400 stores across Canada, which is the physical backbone that makes same-day delivery actually work.
Canada is the first Walmart market outside the United States to run the membership, per the company’s June 4 announcement. That matters because Walmart has spent five years refining this program in its home market and is now confident enough to ship it abroad.
The Crave piece is the tell. Walmart partnered with Bell Media to embed a premium streaming service inside a retail membership, the first program in Canada to do it, Bell Media said. Amazon Prime has paired shopping with Prime Video for years. Walmart is copying the part of Prime that has nothing to do with shipping speed and everything to do with making cancellation feel like a loss.
The executives were blunt about the goal. Catherine Theberge-Conner, Head of Membership at Walmart Canada, called it “a game-changer for Canadians, especially the busy families who rely on our everyday low prices.” Andrew Go, VP of eCommerce and Marketing, said free shipping with no order minimum is “only available through Walmart+” and will “transform how Canadians shop with Walmart.”
The wider signal is the one operators should watch. Walmart is taking its three highest-margin businesses international: memberships, advertising, and its third-party marketplace. Membership is the front door, per reporting from Modern Retail. The marketplace and the ad business are what print money once shoppers are locked inside.
Put the three levers together and the plan is obvious. Walmart’s third-party marketplace has grown into a real Amazon rival, its advertising arm crossed into serious money, and the membership is the glue that keeps shoppers coming back often enough to feed both. A household that pays $89 a year does not browse around. They default to Walmart the way Prime members default to Amazon, and that default is exactly what Walmart is now selling into a second country.
How We Got Here
Walmart launched Walmart+ in the US in 2020, twelve years after Amazon Prime started. The pitch then was the same as now. Pay an annual fee, get free fast delivery, stop comparison shopping. It worked well enough that Walmart kept stacking on perks, including fuel discounts and a Paramount+ streaming bundle in the US.
Canada had a stripped-down version called Delivery Pass since 2023, priced at that same $89 a year. June 4 upgraded every one of those subscribers into the fuller Walmart+ tier without asking them to lift a finger. That is how you launch a membership with a built-in subscriber base on day one instead of starting from zero.
The timing is not random. Amazon’s grip on US shoppers is so tight that sellers feel they cannot leave, even as fees climb every year. Amazon pulled in more than $172 billion in seller fees in 2025, up 11% from the year before, and those fees can eat roughly half of a seller’s revenue on a typical sale, according to Marketplace Pulse. Walmart watched Amazon build that toll booth, decided to build its own, and is now shipping it across the border.
Amazon Prime is the model everyone is chasing. It started in 2005 as a $79 free-shipping plan and turned into the most effective retention tool in retail history, with members spending several times what non-members spend. Twenty years later, canceling Prime feels like giving something up, which is the whole design. Walmart watched that playbook run for two decades and is now running it faster, with streaming baked in from day one instead of bolted on years later.
Why This Matters for Your Store
If you sell on Walmart Marketplace or Amazon, this is a slow squeeze. Every dollar a marketplace spends locking in shoppers with delivery perks and free streaming is a dollar it eventually needs back, and it comes back through your fees and your ad rates. The platform that owns the customer sets the price of reaching that customer, and that price only goes one direction.
If you run an independent high-ticket store, which is what I teach, this is a clean reminder of what you are actually up against and what you are not. You are never going to out-Prime Amazon, and you will never match same-day delivery on a $2,500 sauna. So quit trying. Your edge is the stuff a membership bundle cannot fake, and it starts with owning your own store on Shopify where you control the customer data, the checkout, and every follow-up.
The follow-up is where independents win. A shopper who buys an $1,800 fireplace from you is worth three more emails about accessories, covers, and warranties over the next year. I run those flows through Omnisend so that customer comes back to me directly, not to a marketplace search bar where I have to pay again to win them a second time.
The math on high ticket still favors the small operator. One sale of an $1,800 fireplace at a 25% margin puts $450 in your pocket. You do not need Prime-level volume to make a full-time living, you need a few of those a day. Going deep on one category is the play. Pick a vertical where buyers are willing and able to spend, which my high-ticket niches list lays out, then build real supplier relationships so you can actually fulfill, which I cover step by step in my guide to finding high-ticket suppliers.
None of this holds up without a real business behind it. Before you take a single high-ticket order you want an LLC, a business bank account, and clean books, which I walk through in my business formation checklist. The marketplaces want you dependent and undifferentiated. The whole point of an independent store is to be neither.
Run the numbers on your own situation. If you are doing under 50 orders a month, you cannot absorb a rising ad take-rate the way a top-1,000 marketplace seller can, so heavy concentration on one platform is the riskiest place for you to sit. If you are past a few hundred orders, you have the volume to diversify, and the smart move is to pull a slice of that demand onto a store you own before the next fee announcement does it for you.
If reading all of that made you tired, that is the honest part of this business. Building a store that competes on service and expertise is more work than slapping listings on a marketplace and hoping the algorithm is kind. That is exactly why I built a done-for-you turnkey service where my team builds and launches the store for you. Some people want to learn every piece themselves. Some people just want it running and handed over.
New to high ticket and not sure where to start? My free beginner guide walks you through the first 30 days, from picking a niche to landing your first supplier. Get the free beginner guide →
The Real Cost Lands in the Ad Auction
Memberships do not bill you. The ad auction does. When a platform locks shoppers behind an annual fee, those shoppers stop leaving to compare prices, which means the platform owns more of the buying intent in your category. The only way back in front of them is to bid, and that bid gets more expensive as the moat gets taller.
I watched this play out on Amazon over the last decade. Sponsored placements went from a nice extra to the cost of doing business, and the take rate crept up while sellers kept telling themselves it was temporary. Walmart is building the same machine in a second country, and the marketplace ad business is the reason. If you depend on a marketplace for traffic, model your numbers at next year’s ad rates, not this year’s.
For an independent store the math is different but not free. Your traffic comes from Google Shopping, SEO, and email, and those channels reward owners who build an audience instead of renting one. A store doing 20 to 40 orders a month on its own domain holds something no marketplace seller does: a customer list nobody else can tax. That list is the asset that compounds while ad auctions keep inflating around it.
What To Do This Week
- Run a dependence check. Add up what percent of your revenue comes from Amazon or Walmart Marketplace versus a store you own. If marketplaces are over half, you have a concentration risk that gets more expensive every time a platform adds a perk like this.
- Stand up your own storefront if you do not have one. Even a single-product store you control beats a marketplace listing you rent, because you keep the email, the data, and the margin.
- Fix your legal foundation if you are still a sole proprietor. Bizee files the LLC cheaply and fast, and it is the cleanest first step before you process real high-ticket volume.
- Build one win-back email flow this week. Take your last 90 days of buyers and send a simple three-email sequence on a complementary product. This is the asset a marketplace will never hand you.
- Pick your one category and commit. Go deep on a single vertical with strong margins instead of chasing ten. Depth is what lets a one-person store beat a billion-dollar marketplace on trust.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Walmart+ launching in Canada affect US sellers right now?
Not directly. It is a consumer membership in one country. The signal matters more than the mechanics, because Walmart is exporting Amazon’s lock-in playbook and will bring the marketplace and ad levers next.
Should I start selling on Walmart Marketplace because of this?
Only if your margins survive the fees and ad costs. For high ticket I still prefer an independent store you own over renting space on someone else’s platform.
Is Walmart+ a real threat to Amazon Prime?
In Canada it is the first credible Prime alternative with bundled streaming at $8.97 a month. Whether shoppers actually switch is the open question.
What does the $8.97 monthly fee actually get a shopper?
Unlimited same-day delivery on orders over $35, free shipping with no minimum, and a Crave streaming subscription. That is roughly the price of one standalone delivery.
How do I compete with marketplaces as a small store?
You do not beat them on price or speed. You win on niche depth, phone sales, and owning the customer relationship so you never have to pay twice for the same buyer. A real person answering the phone closes high-ticket orders that an algorithm never will.
Do I need an LLC before I start a high-ticket store?
Yes. Get the LLC, the business bank account, and the books in place before your first real order so you are protected and look legitimate to suppliers.
Want 1-on-1 coaching to launch your high-ticket store the right way? Get the coaching details →
That is the read on Walmart going international. The giants will keep building moats you cannot match, so build the one thing they cannot copy: a store that knows its customer better than any algorithm does. Subscribe to the YouTube channel for daily breakdowns. More breaking news later today.
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Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.
