Walmart Offers Half-Price Memberships Ahead of Prime Day

• Walmart is offering half-price Walmart+ memberships through July 18th.
• The date comes ahead of Amazon’s Prime Day, which falls on July 16 and 17.
• Walmart is making increasing efforts to lure customers away from the e-commerce giant.

Walmart’s members-only sale is behind us and Amazon’s Prime Day is still a week away, but that doesn’t mean the war between the two biggest retailers has stopped.

Through July 18, Walmart is offering a Walmart+ membership for $49 per year, half the regular fee of $98.

If this date caught your attention, it’s because it falls before Amazon’s Prime Day, which falls on July 16 and 17.

For 10 years, Amazon’s annual event dedicated to deals for Prime members has become a fixture in American retail life — and has helped drive new signups to the company.

Offering a membership discount in the days leading up to Prime Day is yet another way Walmart has stepped up its efforts to lure customers away from the e-commerce giant.

Just look at Walmart CFO John David Rainey, who said that in recent months, the number of home delivery orders has outpaced the number of in-store pickup orders.

He also added that Walmart+ members began ordering more frequently and purchasing fewer items — acting a bit like Amazon customers.

Walmart, meanwhile, has aggressively expanded its marketplace of third-party sellers, pursuing a strategy that has enabled Amazon to offer a bewildering array of products on its website.

Walmart’s “store of the future” upgrades are also proving helpful as the company leverages its 4,700 U.S. locations to fulfill online orders.

“You would expect to see benefits in the store,” Rainey said last month, referring to the increase in sales after the renovation. “But we’re also seeing an increase in e-commerce sales in those areas where we’ve renovated.”

Walmart is already taking many Target-style actions to win over customers, and now it is taking over even more sites from Amazon.