Wal-Mart cuts delivery time for pilot shipping plan

[May 12, 2016]  CHICAGO (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores said Thursday it was shortening the delivery time to 2 days from 3 days for an unlimited shipping program it is testing as it taps a network of recently built warehouses for packaging online orders.

The retailer also said it was lowering the annual fee for the shipping program by $1 to $49. The pilot program was started last year in part to counter the growth of a shipping plan offered by rival Amazon.com Inc for a $99 annual fee.

As part of this push, Wal-Mart will turn to regional carriers to deliver an increasing number of its packages, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Thursday. That marks a shift away from FedEx Corp, which handles the bulk of Wal-Mart's deliveries, the newspaper reported.

Wal-Mart has earmarked $2 billion in spending on digital projects and its e-commerce infrastructure over the two fiscal years to January 2017. The investments in part are going toward large warehouses dedicated to filling online orders efficiently.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Chicago; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Bernadette Baum)

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