Walmart+ has finally crossed the border: for the first time since its 2020 debut in the United States, Walmart’s membership program is going international, landing in Canada with a bundle that mashes together groceries, general merchandise, and streaming TV into one sub-$9 monthly fee. It is not just a rebrand of Walmart’s existing Delivery Pass, but a signal that the membership wars that have defined U.S. retail for the past decade are now coming to Canadian doorsteps in a much more serious way.

At launch, Walmart+ in Canada is surprisingly aggressive on price. Members pay 8.97 Canadian dollars per month, or 89 dollars per year, a price point Walmart keeps pointing out is roughly the cost of a single delivery order. In exchange, they get unlimited same-day delivery from local stores on orders over $35, free shipping with no minimum on thousands of items from Walmart.ca and the Walmart app, plus a full Crave Standard with Ads subscription baked into the membership at no extra charge. Canada is also the first market outside the U.S. to get Walmart+, which suggests this is more than a simple pilot – it is a strategic testbed for how far Walmart can push its membership ecosystem beyond pure retail.

If you were already paying for Walmart’s Delivery Pass in Canada, this may feel more like an upgrade than a brand-new product. Walmart introduced Delivery Pass in 2023 at $89 per year, giving Canadians an all-you-can-eat grocery delivery option. Those subscribers will be migrated into Walmart+ automatically at the same price, now with extra benefits attached instead of a higher bill. That framing is key. Walmart is not asking its most engaged delivery customers to step up into a more expensive subscription tier – it is using them as the foundation for a more ambitious membership play that touches groceries, general merchandise, and entertainment.

The core pitch is straightforward: unlimited same-day delivery from store on qualifying orders over $35, priced at the same everyday low prices you would see in aisles. Members also get discounted Express Delivery with two-hour turnaround in eligible areas, as well as free in-store pickup and the ability to keep tweaking their basket – adding last-minute items up to three hours before the delivery or pickup window. In practical terms, that means you can build your weekly grocery and household order throughout the day, then toss in the forgotten coffee filters or kids’ snacks just before the cutoff, without restarting the whole process or paying more shipping.

What makes the Canadian launch feel different from a standard logistics story, though, is the Crave tie-in. Walmart+ in Canada includes a Crave Standard with Ads subscription, turning the membership fee into a hybrid of a shopping utility and an entertainment bundle. Crave brings HBO and Max Originals, Crave Originals, select CTV and Noovo series, big-name movies, and some live sports into the fold, and Walmart is keen to emphasize that it is the only membership program in Canada currently bundling Crave as an embedded benefit. For households already paying for streaming, this is where the math gets interesting: the more overlapping subscriptions you replace, the more Walmart+ starts to feel like a value hack rather than an extra bill.

To understand why Walmart is making this move now, it helps to rewind to 2020, when Walmart+ first launched in the United States. The company framed it as a membership program that marries online and in-store benefits to save families both time and money, with perks like unlimited free store delivery, Scan & Go in the app, and fuel discounts. At launch, Walmart+ in the U.S. cost $98 per year or $12.95 per month, positioning it directly alongside Amazon Prime but with a more overt focus on everyday essentials and in-store integration. Over time, Walmart has layered on more digital services and partnerships, effectively turning membership into the connective tissue of its retail flywheel.

Canada is the first international test of that philosophy, and Walmart is not treating it as a carbon copy of the U.S. package. Instead, it is leaning into a local content partnership with Bell Media’s Crave, clearly betting that entertainment is now table stakes for any membership program that wants to live next to Prime or telecom bundles on consumers’ monthly statements. Where the U.S. version leans more on fuel discounts and in-store shopping tools, the Canadian flavor leans on streaming value and delivery convenience, acknowledging that competition for subscription dollars now cuts across retail, telecom, and media simultaneously.

For Walmart Canada, this is also a statement about frequency and loyalty. A typical household might hit Walmart for weekly groceries, occasional home goods, and seasonal purchases, but delivery and streaming create daily touchpoints. Every grocery order, every late-night scroll through Crave, and every impulse “we’re out of dish soap” top-up becomes a reminder that the value is tied to a single membership. If you are already paying for it, the cost-per-use goes down with every order and every episode watched, making it harder to justify canceling.

The economics are particularly noteworthy. The annual $89 price tag is intentionally anchored against the cost of standalone services: a few restaurant delivery orders, a separate streaming subscription, or recurring shipping fees can easily surpass that over a year. By bringing shipping minimums down to zero and shipping fees effectively to zero for members, Walmart is encouraging basket expansion online, which in turn helps cover the membership economics through higher order volume and attachment of non-grocery categories with better margins. That dynamic mirrors what we have already seen in the U.S., where memberships and unlimited delivery programs tend to shift shopping behavior from “occasional top-up” to “default store for everything.”

There is also an ecosystem angle beyond pure retail. In parallel with Walmart+ in Canada, the company is experimenting with integrated Subway meal ordering and express food delivery inside its app, using the same infrastructure that powers retail delivery. That blurs the line between grocery, restaurant, and last-mile logistics, and makes the membership look less like a “Walmart shipping plan” and more like a lifestyle utility that sits in the background of everyday consumption. If the Subway integration performs well, you can imagine Walmart layering in more restaurant partners or services over time, further increasing the value of the subscription without necessarily raising the sticker price right away.

For Canadian consumers, especially families managing tight schedules and rising costs, Walmart+ arrives into a landscape that has already been primed by years of Amazon Prime, grocery delivery services, and streaming bundles. The difference is that this membership is explicitly anchored to a discount retailer that built its brand on low prices and physical scale, not just convenience or entertainment. When you combine that with unlimited same-day delivery, no-minimum shipping, and a recognizable streaming brand in Crave, the offer starts to look like a “good enough” bundle for households that do not want to juggle multiple separate subscriptions.

Of course, the real test will be behavior over the next year. Will Delivery Pass users simply enjoy the extra perks and carry on as usual, or will Walmart+ meaningfully change how often Canadians default to Walmart for both groceries and general merchandise? Will the Crave inclusion actually drive sign-ups among cord cutters and streaming-first households, or will it be seen as a nice-to-have add-on that does not fundamentally alter their subscription stack? And perhaps most importantly for Walmart’s long-term ambitions, can the company take what it learns in Canada and replicate or adapt it for other markets, turning Walmart+ into a truly global membership platform rather than a U.S.-centric experiment with a northern offshoot?

What is clear already is that Walmart+ in Canada is not a tentative toe in the water. It is a fully formed, competitively priced membership that blends logistics, streaming, and app-driven convenience into a single, relatively simple pitch: pay the cost of one delivery per month, and forget about fees and minimums for the rest of the year. In a market where subscription fatigue is real but the appetite for value is stronger than ever, that might be exactly the kind of straightforward, utility-first promise that gets Canadians to hit “start free trial” and see if Walmart can earn a permanent spot in their monthly budget.