News in brief

Sam's Club to offer gas purchase via app

Sam's Club is taking the Scan & Go technology it uses in its shopper clubs to its gas pumps.

After testing the service earlier this year, Walmart Inc.'s members-only warehouse division expanded it this month to more than 70 Sam's Clubs across the country, the company said in a news release Wednesday.

Sam's Club expects to have the mobile technology available at all its 518 fuel stations by the end of the year, the company said.

Members who want to use Scan & Go Fuel must download the Sam's Club app to their phones, click on the Scan & Go icon and then scan the QR code at the pump. They'll select a payment method in the app and get a receipt in their email.

Scan & Go has been popular with Sam's Club members since it was implemented in clubs in 2016. In fact, the company said its member adoption rate has doubled over this time last year because of the pandemic.

Walmart tried it briefly, but customers largely rejected it. Walmart is bringing the app-based shopping tool back for members of its new Walmart Plus subscription plan.

-- Serenah McKay

[CORONAVIRUS: Click here for our complete coverage » arkansasonline.com/coronavirus]

Airports recovering, but declines steep

Passenger traffic at the state's two largest airports continues to recover from coronavirus pandemic lows, but remains below normal.

A total of 79,278 passengers went through Little Rock's Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field in August. The figure represents a 58.6% decline from the 191,559 passengers who went through in the same month in 2019.

Through the first eight months of 2020, passenger traffic fell 56.9% compared with the same period last year, going from 1,488,923 passengers to 641,321.

Northwest Arkansas National Airport in Highfill reported slightly steeper declines. Passenger traffic fell 68.5% in August compared with the same month a year ago. A total of 51,198 passengers went through the airport last month. In August 2019, 162,101 passengers went through Northwest Arkansas National.

[RELATED » Interactive: Economic impacts of covid-19 » arkansasonline.com/economy/]

For the year, passenger traffic is down 58.8% compared with the same period last year. The airport saw 498,945 passengers through the first eight months of 2020 compared with the 1,211,576 it saw in the first eight months of 2019.

-- Noel Oman

Index tumbles 1.39 to close at 430.15

The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, closed Wednesday at 430.15, down 1.39.

"Equities sold off in afternoon trading following comments by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell that 'the path ahead remains highly uncertain' as the information technology and communications sectors underperformed," said Leon Lants, managing director at Stephens Inc.

The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.

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