Walmart to Pay $100 Million to Settle FTC's Delivery Driver Pay Claims

By Katherine Hamilton

Walmart agreed to pay $100 million to settle allegations from the Federal Trade Commission and 11 states that it deceived delivery drivers about their pay.

The FTC and states had alleged that Walmart showed drivers in its Spark Driver delivery program inflated base pay and tip amounts, and falsely claimed that 100% of customer tips would go to drivers.

Walmart's Spark service delivers goods to customers via gig workers and the Spark Driver app. Workers view the base pay and tips offered by Walmart when deciding whether to accept a delivery order job.

The FTC said Walmart didn't notify drivers that the payment for the advertised tip amount hadn't been preauthorized, so drivers wouldn't receive that amount if the customer was unable to cover the cost of the tip.

The retailer also didn't inform workers that it would reduce their base pay and tips when orders were removed from jobs including multiple deliveries, and didn't disclose all the conditions drivers had to meet to earn the incentive pay for completing certain tasks, the FTC said.

Write to Katherine Hamilton at katherine.hamilton@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 26, 2026 11:28 ET (16:28 GMT)