Walmart Marketplace Seller Summit Fee Cuts Target Amazon Sellers

What Walmart announced

At its Let's Grow! Marketplace Seller Summit, Walmart offered third-party merchants several things: AI tools, referral-fee cuts, faster fulfillment and a first route into its physical stores. Taken together, the package looks built for sellers who are reconsidering how much of their business runs through Amazon. The company held the summit on Aug. 26, 2025, and pitched the program as shaped by seller feedback2.

The tools include an AI-powered listing system for setting up single or bulk items, a round-the-clock "Smart Assistant" for support, and a Seller Advisors Program that gives merchants a direct feedback line to Walmart leadership1. Sellers who ship their own orders can now set delivery promises automatically by region. An upgraded Brand Portal lets brands flag fraudulent listings and protect product authenticity1.

The pricing changes matter more. Walmart dropped the referral fee to 0% on qualifying toys and halved it on qualifying pet supplies. It also offered cuts of up to 100% on qualifying top-selling items across categories, aimed at the holiday peak1. Walmart's referral fees, the commission it takes on each sale, usually run from 6% to 15% depending on category2.

Fulfillment as a competitive weapon

Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS) carried much of the pitch. Walmart says its fulfillment costs about 15% less on average than competitors. It also says items carrying the "Fulfilled by Walmart" tag with two-day-or-faster delivery promises saw roughly 50% gross merchandise value growth on average1. Both numbers come from Walmart's own internal data for the year ending June 30, 2025, so they are company claims rather than independent benchmarks2. Next-day delivery for WFS sellers expanded to major metros including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston and Atlanta8.

The Multichannel Solutions program stands out. It lets sellers use WFS for orders from their own websites, social shops and rival marketplaces, and new users get 30% off fulfillment fees1. Walmart's site names Amazon, eBay, Shein and Temu among the channels it can serve2. Walmart is offering itself as a logistics provider for orders placed on Amazon, which has long tied its Prime badge to its own fulfillment network.

The store advantage Amazon can't copy

The most distinctive piece is the move to show Marketplace items inside Walmart stores. It started at the Cypress, Texas, location that opened in April with QR codes linking shoppers to the wider online assortment, beginning with a handful of items on display1. Walmart has not said which stores will get the extended aisle or when the rollout will widen2. Manish Joneja, the senior vice president who runs Walmart U.S. Marketplace and WFS, said sellers won't be charged for the in-store visibility. Walmart's own first-party merchants help pick which items are featured2.

This builds on a pitch Walmart made at its first summit: sellers whose products do well online could earn real shelf space in stores, something Amazon cannot match9. In September 2026, agency attendees reported that Walmart also plans to use stores as last-mile delivery hubs for marketplace sellers eventually10.

Momentum behind the pitch

The growth figures explain the timing, though they vary by period and by who is counting. Walmart reported Marketplace sales up 17% in its fiscal second quarter of 20262. One seller-analytics firm put fourth-quarter 2025 growth at 27% year over year3. An agency recap of the 2026 summit said Walmart presented first-quarter growth of 50%, its fastest pace in two and a half years5. These numbers cover different quarters and come from different sources, but they all point the same way.

The seller count is rising too. Marketplace Pulse data showed Walmart passing 200,000 active sellers in 2025 after adding 44,000 in the first five months. That nearly matched the 59,000 it added in all of 20242.

The 2026 summit, which event listings placed in San Diego from Sept. 1 to 3, went further on advertising7. Walmart Connect folded its Ad Center into Seller Center and finally added negative keywords. It also put Target ROAS and Smart Performance bidding into alpha and cut the Sponsored Video minimum bid from $0.80 to $0.50510. Coverage of the analytics side doesn't line up: one vendor reported a redesigned real-time Seller Analytics dashboard launching at an April 2026 Let's Grow! event3, while other listings tie the summit to the late-summer dates7. Either way, the direction is consistent: Walmart is closing the tooling gap that made Amazon the default for data-hungry brands.

The Amazon fee backdrop

Walmart's fee cuts land at a moment when Amazon's costs keep rising. Amazon raised FBA fulfillment fees by an average of $0.08 per unit starting Jan. 15, 2026. The company framed the increase as below inflation and under 0.5% of an average item's price13. Multi-Channel Fulfillment rose about $0.30 per unit and Buy with Prime about $0.2413. Then, on April 17, Amazon added a 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge to U.S. fulfillment fees12. Sellers say it was not part of the January schedule19.

Accounts of how much this hurts sellers vary, and the averages hide the spread. Amazon kept referral fees frozen for 2025 and 2026, with 15% as the most common rate18. Some changes also lower costs: a new Small Bulky tier cuts fees for mid-size goods, and most Extra-Large items got cheaper18. But inbound defect fees jumped from a few cents to as much as $5.72 for bulky items17. Aged-inventory surcharges also got tougher11. One worked example put Amazon's total fees on a $24.99 home-goods item at about 34.5% of the sale price before advertising12. Small averages turn into real money at scale. One industry executive estimated that eight cents on 1,000 daily FBA units adds up to nearly $29,000 a year13.

Advertising costs are another pressure point. Starting in April 2026, Amazon began taking pay-per-click spend straight out of sales proceeds instead of letting sellers pay by card. A sellers' group responded with a one-day ad boycott23.

This is where Walmart's offer bites. A 0% referral fee on toys is not just a holiday promotion. It is a direct comparison with a rival whose fee stack keeps getting more complicated. Still, Walmart's incentives are limited to "qualifying" items and categories, so sellers should run the numbers on their own catalogs before reading the cuts as broad discounts.

The regulatory shadow over Amazon

The legal backdrop strengthens Walmart's position. The FTC's 2023 monopolization case, brought with state attorneys general, alleges that Amazon punishes sellers for offering lower prices elsewhere and ties Prime eligibility to FBA. It also argues that Amazon's fees end up as higher prices across online retail24. The case has repeatedly slipped and now has a bench trial set for March 29, 2027, before Judge John Chun2225. Dispositive motions are due Oct. 16, 202622. Amazon said in September it would seek a further delay21. There is no liability finding, and Amazon's marketplace rules remain fully in force22.

A second front opened on Aug. 31, 2026. The FTC and 22 states filed a consumer-protection suit alleging Amazon secretly inflated ad prices for more than a million companies, including marketplace sellers buying Sponsored Products27. The complaint alleges that an undisclosed "soft reserve price" pushed advertisers into paying their full bid roughly 80% of the time by 202423. Amazon says the complaint misreads how advertisers operate and cites no evidence of higher consumer prices27. On the consumer side, a separate class action, De Coster v. Amazon, is scheduled for trial on June 14, 202729. Last fall, Amazon also paid $2.5 billion to settle an FTC probe over Prime subscription practices30.

Reading the moment

The obvious reading is that Walmart is competing on tools. The better reading is that it is competing on trust and cost structure. Its summit messaging leaned heavily on "marketplace integrity"18. That framing fits neatly against a competitor whose fee practices and ad auctions are now the subject of federal litigation. Offering to fulfill orders from other marketplaces goes straight at the multi-homing barrier the FTC says Amazon created24.

None of this means Amazon sellers are leaving in large numbers. Amazon's reach is still far larger, and the lawsuits may take years to change anything. But the cost of adding Walmart as a second channel is falling, while the cost of relying only on Amazon keeps rising. For sellers, the safest move is to diversify while the courts take their time.