Paul Sakuma / AP
On Tuesday, Amazon announced discounted fees for its Prime membership for customers participating in certain government assistance programs. Customers who qualify can access Prime's unlimited free two-day shipping, video, music, reading, and photo storage services for $5.99 per month for a year. Amazon Prime's normal price is $10.99 per month or $99 per year (which works out to $8.25 per month).
Taking on Walmart: Amazon's Prime discount is a direct move to compete with Walmart, which brought in $13 billion in sales last year from shoppers using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or 18% of the money spent through the program, according to the Wall Street Journal. With that said, EBT cards, commonly used to collect funds from assistance programs, can't be used to pay for the membership.