Amazon will soon let drivers in the U.S. pay for their gas through its Alexa voice assistant. The announcement was made during this year’s CES 2020 event in Las Vegas where the company announced other updates to its hardware and software products and services.
Alexa is only one of many competing voice assistant solutions from big tech companies, but with the backing of Amazon and inclusion on its own line of hardware, Alexa has been massively expanding its user footprint over the last few years. Equally, Alexa has been growing it in its capabilities over the same time period. With the voice assistant already having made its way into the car, the next logical step appears to be helping users when they are out and about with their car. For example, when filling the car up with gas.
Amazon has now confirmed that drivers will be able to issue an “Alexa, pay for gas” command and have Alexa take care of the payment. There are a couple of more steps involved as the user will need to verbally confirm the gas station location and pump number when asked by Alexa. Not to mention, the user will still have to pump their own gas, but otherwise the feature is designed to speed up the time it takes to fill the car up with all the payments coming directly from the user’s Amazon account card on file. According to the information, the feature is set to go live later in the year and will initially only be available at 11,500 Exxon and Mobil gas stations in the U.S. In addition, users will obviously need access to Alexa while on the road - either through cars with Alexa built-in, an Alexa enabled smartphone, or one of the many on-the-go devices equipped with Amazon’s voice assistant.
Alexa Paying For Your Gas Is Not As Game-Changing As It Sounds
While the idea of just asking a voice assistant like Alexa to pay for your gas sounds great, it is unlikely to be a massive time-saving feature in its current form. This is due to the feature only cutting down on one of the steps in the process - and that’s where voice assistants still suffer. This is particularly true when it comes to payment-related features due to the heightened level of security and scrutiny that’s involved.
Besides launching voice assistants to help with commands at home (and when away from home), Amazon, Apple, and Google all also appear to be fixated on payments. All of them already offer some “Pay” branded app or service and want to be included in the payment process whether you’re shopping with them or anyone else. This latest announcement from Amazon directly feeds into that same ethos with the feature providing the online retail giant with yet another way to monitor and collect data on user habits. Of course, if you are already heavily invested in Amazon’s ecosystem then this is likely to be a useful feature for you. It might not save a great amount of time, but Amazon's Alexa will save on having to physically pay and cut down on the issues surrounding using cash or credit cards in public places.
Source: Amazon Pay & Alexa