Walmart Revamps Delivery Service With Georgia Pilot

Walmart

After announcing an experimental plan last year for store employees to deliver online orders following their shifts for extra pay, Walmart has since retreated from the original pilot. But the retailer is now testing a delivery service with employees at a store in Georgia, Reuters reported.

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    The new service is a more modest iteration, with only four employees reportedly participating. In addition, Walmart is updating its guidelines for the new service and gearing it toward groceries and complementary items, such as paper plates. A spokesperson for Walmart told Reuters that the retailer did conclude its first delivery experiment in 2018, but that the company is “encouraged by what we’re seeing” at its store in Georgia.

    In June of last year, Reuters had reported that the original program could have been a way for the retailer to compete with rival Amazon by cutting shipping costs, speeding up the delivery of packages and allowing workers to earn additional money. And Walmart’s stores are within 10 miles of 90 percent of the U.S. population.

    “Imagine all the routes our associates drive to and from work and the houses they pass along the way. It’s easy to see why this test could be a game changer,” Marc Lore, head of Walmart’s eCommerce operations, had said.

    Since joining in August of last year, Lore has overseen Walmart’s acquisition of three online retailers — including the $3 billion purchase of his former company, Jet.com — and made other eCommerce changes. Walmart now offers free two-day shipping on online orders above $35, without any membership fees, to compete with Amazon’s popular Prime shipping program.

    The company explained that the trucks used to deliver eCommerce packages to retail locations for store pickup can also bring additional orders that a worker can then sign up to deliver. The voluntary program allowed store workers to sign up for a maximum of 10 deliveries per day.


    Fifth Third: FinTech Platforms Drive Loan Growth Despite ‘Tepid’ Environment

    Fifth Third Bancorp saw its investments in tech-enabled products continue to pay off in the second quarter, Fifth Third Chairman, CEO and President Tim Spence said Thursday (July 17) during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

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      In commercial payments, the company’s investments in its Newline by Fifth Third embedded finance platform for enterprises led to 30% year-over-year revenue growth and an increase of more than $1 billion in commercial deposits connected to Newline services, Spence said.

      Fifth Third continued to see transactions migrate from legacy ACH to modern instant payment rails during the second quarter, Spence said.

      Rippling selected Newline to be their payments infrastructure provider, joining our existing roster of blue-chip FinTech customers,” Spence said.

      Fifth Third saw loan growth in its FinTech platforms, Provide and Dividend, Spence said.

      “In a quarter where uneven [commercial and industry (C&I)] loan demand and a soft housing market made loan growth tepid for the industry, our diversified loan origination platforms produced average loan growth of 5% over the prior year,” Spence said.

      The company’s loan growth reached its highest level in over two years during the quarter, according to a Thursday earnings release.

      Highlighting new additions to the bank’s digital services, Spence said Fifth Third partnered with digital estate planning platform Trust & Will to offer free wills to Fifth Third customers.

      When announcing this service in a May 19 press release, Fifth Third said it proactively addresses the concerns of a market in which 83% of Americans think a will is important, but only 31% have one in place.

      During the second half of the year, Fifth Third will begin to embed artificial intelligence-enabled functionality into its mobile app. Spence said during the call that this “should further improve the user experience and reduce volumes in higher-cost service channels.”

      From the second quarter of 2024 to the same quarter in 2025, Fifth Third saw its average active digital users increase from 3.07 million to 3.17 million and its average active mobile users rise from 2.32 million to 2.43 million, according to a presentation released Thursday in conjunction with the earnings call.

      The share of new consumer deposit accounts with digital originations rose from 22% to 28% over the past year, while the share of mortgage applications that were digitally assisted slipped from 98% to 97%, per the presentation.