Walmart ups the ante in contactless delivery, tests drones to send coronavirus kits to homes in Vegas

On Tuesday, Walmart announced that it would start testing the use of drones to deliver at-home COVID-19 testing kits. Yahoo Finance Correspondent Julia La Roche joins The First Trade with Alexis Christoforous and Brian Sozzi to discuss.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: But staying on the shopping scene, Julia La Roche is still with us. Julia, it will also be a holiday season of drones for Walmart.

JULIA LA ROCHE: Well, I don't know about holiday season quite yet, maybe in the future. But Walmart is doing its third pilot in the last, I don't know, three weeks at this point. But this time, it is for self-administered COVID-19 collection kits.

They started up this piloting in north Las Vegas yesterday, actually, and they're teamed up with Quest Diagnostics for these testing kits and DroneUp, which is a drone company. And in order to qualify to even trial this program, you have to live within a one-mile radius of a Walmart store in a single family home.

And what they're doing is they are basically for no fee at this point doing the deliveries of these testing kits, and then you can ship them to Quest by diagnostics. You can-- they have a prepaid label here. But they're not charging delivery fee, and the kit is free.

So it makes you wonder if people going to be doing this in north Las Vegas. I would be really interested. They're also saying that they're looking to avoid trees and cars, so they will put it in your driveway, on the front sidewalk, or in the backyard.

And as I had mentioned, they are doing two other pilots. They have one going on in north Arkansas with Zipline, which is that well-known startup for delivering medical supplies in Rwanda. They are doing some select health and wellness products in northwest Arkansas area, and they can make those deliveries within a 50-mile radius of a Walmart store.

And then the first pilot was with Flytrex in Fayetteville, North Carolina. I was actually looking and talking to some folks who were-- I'm trying to find out if anybody's done this drone trial yet. I have yet to find someone, but I'm on the lookout for it.

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, keep on looking, because it's definitely some cool stuff. Julia La Roche, thanks so much.