Amazon has announced the launch of Alexa delivery notifications for all merchants via Amazon Pay.
“We’ve gone from typing and touching to swiping and now to talking, each mode of interaction has gotten progressively easier for the consumer. What could be more simple or intuitive? More personal than a conversation? With the rapid adoption of voice across multiple use cases and devices, commerce may well be the next frontier,” said Patrick Gauthier, Amazon’s VP of external payments, during a keynote speech at NRF 2019.
In fact, a commerce survey by Amazon Pay revealed that 20 percent of U.S. consumers are likely to make a purchase using voice in the next three years, while 42 percent of US consumers are likely to use voice for checking delivery status in the next three years.
With that in mind, Amazon Pay merchants can now integrate voice into their eCommerce offerings with Alexa’s delivery notifications capability. This offers retailers benefits including: enhanced customer experience with proactive shipment delivery notifications; less of a need for customer support due to fewer customer service inquiries checking for delivery status updates; brand differentiation by becoming an early adopter of voice commerce with Alexa; and a simple and straightforward API, enabling faster integration.
This new feature is another way the eCommerce giant is enticing merchants to use Amazon Pay. Last year it was reported that the company was offering discounts to merchants who use its online payments service. Amazon reportedly was even offering to negotiate lower fees with select merchants who make long-term commitments to use Amazon Pay.
In an interview with PYMNTS’ Karen Webster, Gauthier said that 33 million consumers from 170 countries are using Amazon Pay. Roughly half of those customers are members of Amazon’s coveted customer base: Amazon Prime. Nearly a third of the transactions made by those customers were done via a mobile device, with an average transaction size of $80.