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Published 15:14 IST, October 16th 2019

Amazon Pay lets you pay bills just by talking to Alexa, check now

Amazon has announced that its Indian users could now pay their utility bills with Amazon Pay by talking to Alexa.

Reported by: Tech Desk
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Amazon has announced that its Indian users could now pay their utility bills with Amazon Pay by talking to Alexa. This new Alexa feature supports payment of bills across categories such as electricity, water, post-paid mobile, cooking gas, broadband, and DTH  Users of Amazon Echo, Fire TV Stick and other devices with Alexa built-in can just say commands such as “Alexa, pay my mobile bill” or “Alexa, pay my electricity bill” to start using the new feature.  

Amazon Pay through Alexa 

  For existing Amazon Pay users, Alexa would fetch the pending bill amount due for bills from their registered Amazon account. Confirmation, from customers, would then be sought. Here, customers could enable a voice pin on the Alexa app in order to add a layer of security to the transactions. Once the users’ voice is authenticated, Alexa would harness Amazon Pay to complete the bill transaction. Notifications would then be sent to the customer’s registered mobile phone number, confirming the transaction. For new Amazon Pay customers, Alexa would send a link to register their bill details on the Amazon shopping app before proceeding with bill payment. 

 Apart from making payments, customers could also ask Alexa about their Amazon Pay balances. To resort to this, users could simply ask the assistant, “Alexa, what’s my balance?”.  To top-up the Amazon Pay account users could say “Alexa, add Rs 500 to my Amazon Pay balance” and Alexa would then send a link to the registered users mobile phone number for completing the transaction. Finally, existing Alexa users could check information through their companion app, or just ask “Alexa, tell me about Amazon Pay features”. 

For the uninitiated, Amazon Pay provides a host of payment facilities on a single unified platform. This new feature on Alexa would further help in reducing payment friction as customers would be able to complete their payment transactions with their voices. Amazon Pay also comes with multiple cashback and EMI options, to enable its customers purchase commodities at relatively low costs.  

Puneesh Kumar, Country Manager for Alexa Experiences and Devices, Amazon India stated “We consistently obsess over customer needs and consider their feedback when developing new Alexa features. This new integration of Amazon Pay with Alexa will help reduce both time and effort for customers who use Amazon Pay for bill payments and repeat similar transactions every month. We are also excited to share that this is an India-first feature which Alexa customers in India can enjoy before any other international customers.”  Mahendra Nerurkar, Director, Amazon Pay added “ Amazon Pay’s integration with Alexa will enable customers to use digital payments for their daily use cases making it hassle-free and swift. Paying of bills such as electricity, water, post-paid mobile, cooking gas, DTH and more will become seamless with just one voice command.” 

Also Read: Amazon Eating Google Online Search Ad Share: EMarketer

Updated 15:47 IST, October 16th 2019