Amazon India has announced today that users will be able to pay their utility bills by using Amazon Pay just by speaking to Alexa. This payment method has been available through many other online wallets for quite a while and has finally come to Amazon Pay. Users can now use Alexa to pay their utilities across a variety of categories such as electricity, water, post-paid mobile, cooking gas, broadband, DTH and more.
Users can use this feature across any of their Alexa enabled devices such as Amazon Echo, Fire TV Stick and other devices with Alexa built-in by using commands such as “Alexa, pay my mobile bill” or “Alexa, pay my electricity bill”.
For existing customers of Amazon Pay, Alexa will first retrieve the due amount for the particular utility from their registered Amazon account. The payment will go through after customer confirmation is received. For added security, customers can enable a voice pin for authentication. Once the transaction is approved, Alexa will use Amazon Pay to complete the transaction and send a confirmation notification to the customers registered mobile number.
New Amazon Pay customers will be first required to register their bill details to their account before proceeding with the transaction.
Amazon has also added the functionality to let customers check the balance in their Amazon Pay wallet. Users can simply say, “Alexa, what’s my balance?” to know their balance. To top-up the Amazon Pay account, users can say “Alexa, add ₹500 to my Amazon Pay balance” and Alexa will send a link to the registered mobile phone to complete the transaction.
Commenting on the integration between Alexa and Amazon Pay, Mahendra Nerurkar, Director, Amazon Pay said:
Amazon Pay is committed to the long-term vision of a cashless India and continues to invest in experiences, which reduce customer friction, improve affordability and foster everyday habits, thereby building preference for digital payments. 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.
Puneesh Kumar, Country Manager for Alexa Experiences and Devices, Amazon India said:
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.