Walmart offered to pay Spark drivers as little as 52 cents per order after a 'temporary' app issue

• Walmart offered some Spark drivers as little as 52 cents to deliver orders to customers' homes.
• That doesn't even cover the cost of gas for independent contractors, one told Business Insider.

Walmart offered to pay some Spark delivery drivers as little as 52 cents to deliver groceries and other merchandise from its stores to customers' doorsteps after "a temporary issue" in its app.

Screenshots of orders from the Spark app shared with Business Insider show potential payouts to gig workers of less than a dollar. The order with the 52-cent payout, which Walmart offered to a Spark driver on January 23, involved shopping for items at a Walmart store then delivering the order to an address a mile away.

The offer was shown on the app to Spark drivers at a Walmart store in Texas, according to one driver who saw it, and appeared alongside higher-paying ones, such as a similar job with estimated earnings of $4.95.

Meanwhile, on the same date at a New Mexico store, the app offered drivers an offer to shop and deliver items to an apartment 1.8 miles away. Estimated pay for the gig: 91 cents, according to a screenshot. BI could not confirm whether any Spark drivers accepted either offer.

"There was a temporary issue that affected drivers in a particular area, which resulted in some drivers receiving an inaccurate offer amount," a Walmart spokesperson told BI. "We worked quickly to correct the discrepancy, and drivers received adjusted earnings within the same earnings period."

The spokesperson did not confirm how widely the offers were distributed.

Delivering even a small order close to the store for such low pay doesn't make financial sense, one Spark driver in Georgia told BI, and has prompted some ill-feeling toward Walmart. Pay has generally been declining on multiple delivery apps since a run-up in demand early in the pandemic, gig workers have told BI. Last July, for example, Instacart cut its minimum batch pay for orders to $4 from $7 ahead of its IPO.

"I don't believe anybody who has bills, a vehicle, and children can cover any cost doing a 52- or 91-cent delivery," the Georgia Spark driver said. "And quite frankly, it's a slap in the face to be given such an amount that is way below minimum wage."

App glitches aside, drivers have told BI that getting good-paying orders has become harder on Spark as well — both because there are fewer to claim and because there appear to be more people vying for them.

Spark drivers who use multiple accounts under names other than their own have also become common sights at many Walmart stores, drivers and employees told BI last year.

Walmart has tried to address the problem by introducing a facial recognition feature on the Spark app that checks a user's selfie against government-issued photo identification. But some Spark drivers have reported being shut out by the feature despite using accounts in their own names.

Do you work for Walmart Spark, Instacart, DoorDash, or another gig delivery service and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com