Walmart is the largest retailer in America and the world. In 2024, the company had about 255 million customer visits each week to Walmart stores worldwide.
Walmart executives are working to keep their already monumental customer base growing — and they want you to know about it.
“Walmart. Who knew?” has been a tagline across its latest advertisements as it tells customers about pre-existing and new little-known features.
You can skip the commercials, though. Here are some of the biggest changes in 2025.
Assistance for shoppers on Medicare
Medicare Advantage plans often come with supplemental benefits — such as covering over-the-counter medications — that many recipients struggle to cash in on, to the tune of billions of dollars per year.
Walmart’s new tool aims to help close that gap and hopefully save beneficiaries money.
Medicare Advantage beneficiaries can add their card details to their online Walmart accounts (via Walmart.com/wallet). Once added, a “benefits program eligible” badge will appear on items that their benefits might cover, like OTC medicines and supplements, healthy foods and other wellness products.
There’s also a new search filter so that online shoppers can look exclusively at items covered under their Medicare Advantage plan. In-store shoppers can scan items with the Walmart app to see if they’re covered. And Walmart has included a tracker to help customers keep track of their benefits spending.
Walmart is also introducing Everyday Health Signals, an opt-in artificial intelligence program that analyzes eligible Medicare Advantage recipients’ past Walmart purchases and provides suggestions for healthy eating and shopping lists.
Lower prices
In this economy? Yes!
In an August earnings call, Walmart President and CEO Douglas McMillon said the company had about 7,400 price rollbacks the prior quarter and they had thousands of others in the quarter before that.
These rollbacks come even as McMillon says, “[W]e’ve continued to see our costs increase each week.”
The number of price rollbacks on grocery items in particular was up 30% compared to the previous quarter.
Faster delivery
Need to get something ASAP? You may be able to get it in just an hour. Walmart has been using drones, in partnership with drone-provider Wing, for delivery since 2021, and the company has been expanding the program.
Bentonville, Arkansas, and Dallas, Texas, have been on Walmart’s list of cities with drone delivery. The company is expanding its drone delivery to these cities in 2025:
- Houston, Texas
- Atlanta, Georgia
- Tampa, Florida
- Orlando, Florida
- Charlotte, North Carolina
There will be 100 new stores participating in the drone expansion. If you’re near those areas and want to be notified when the service is available, you can sign up at Wing.com.
Walmart’s drones make delivery speedy, completing some orders in under 30 minutes.
You don’t need drones for Walmart’s fast delivery, though. Currently, 93% of the country can receive a Walmart delivery in three hours or less. The company’s executives say that may bump up to 95% of the country by the end of the year.
Walmart also has expanded its availability of same-day pharmacy delivery, making it available now in 49 states.
More stores
Going to Walmart may get even easier for you this year.
Last year, Walmart announced plans to remodel 650 stores across the U.S. and to build or convert 150 more. One of the conversions is taking a smaller, traditional store and turning it into a Walmart Supercenter.
The newly built stores will use Walmart’s new “Store of the Future” concept, which means new layouts, more selection and improved technology to help both staff and customers.
A newly opened Supercenter in Texas has new features like digital price tags, a sushi station, a Dunkin’ and other “modern” upgrades.
More prescription-filling facilities
Prescriptions from your local Walmart were necessarily filled there.
Walmart utilizes central fill facilities, each of which can serve hundreds of stores.
This year, Walmart opened its largest centralized prescription processing facility to date in Maryland. The facility is 102,000 square feet and is designed to fulfill up to 100,000 prescriptions a day. It supports more than 700 stores across 16 states and Washington, D.C.
Two more facilities are currently planned for Arizona and Missouri, but they won’t open until 2026.
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