The trend: Amazon, Target, and Walmart are each making a push to reassure procrastinators that their holiday gifts will still make it under the tree—even if they wait until the very last minute, per Business Insider.

• Beginning on December 9, Amazon will add an “Arrives before Christmas” message in search results and on item detail pages. Many of those items will be available for fulfillment as late as Christmas Eve via delivery or one of the company's 25,000 pickup locations. The company will wrap certain items as well.
• Target is extending its store hours from 7am to midnight local time in the weeks leading up to December 23, and from 7am to 8pm on Christmas Eve. Customers can get orders fulfilled within 2 hours through curbside or in-store pickup, or choose same-day delivery for a $9.99 fee (free for Circle360 members).
• Walmart stores will be open until 6pm on Christmas Eve. And while it hasn’t announced its ecommerce delivery plans yet, they will likely mirror or improve upon last year’s approach when it promised to fulfill express delivery orders placed as late as 4pm on Christmas Eve.

Why it matters: The holidays offer retailers a high-stakes stage to show off their fulfillment muscle. Once shoppers realize they can have an online purchase at their door within hours, they’re more likely to shift more of their spending to that retailer. And since only a handful of merchants can reliably meet true last-minute demand, those capabilities become a powerful competitive edge. That’s why Amazon and Walmart have repeatedly reset customer expectations for delivery speed.

• Amazon’s shift from a nationwide distribution model to a regional one has dramatically increased speed: Same- or next-day deliveries in the US are up more than 30% YoY, and the company is working to expand those speeds to more than 4,000 smaller cities and rural communities by year-end. It’s also testing ultra-fast 30-minute delivery for groceries and household essentials in parts of Seattle and Philadelphia.
• Walmart, which fulfilled its fastest Black Friday order in just 10 minutes last month, roughly doubled its same-day deliveries last year, per The Wall Street Journal. It can now deliver most of the 120,000 items in its supercenters to 93% of US households the same day, often within hours.
• While Target has struggled to match those speeds, it recently began testing new fulfillment models for overnight delivery of online orders, per The Journal.

Our take: Last-minute fulfillment over the holidays is a high-stakes endeavor. Retailers that consistently deliver on their promises can build long-term loyalty, but even a single slip can trigger an outsize blowback. With delivery expectations rising every year, brands need to ensure they can hit ever-faster speeds without sacrificing reliability—especially when the clock is ticking loudest.