Amazon Alexa to support utility bill payments

Amazon says that people will be able to pay their utility bills on Alexa using its Amazon Pay feature.

The company said Sunday at the Money 20/20 financial technology conference that it's partnering with Paymentus to allow for voice or online payments, according to MarketWatch. Paymentus entered into a similar partnership with PayPal to expedite bill-paying in January 2019.

"We want to remove that friction [around bill queries] and enable the interaction in the moment," Patrick Gauthier, vice president of Amazon Pay, told Bank Innovation. "You might think of Paymentus the back end for the utility, and we are connecting Paymentus to Alexa and Amazon Pay."

Gauthier said Amazon sees a potential opportunity in the bill-paying market because approximately 70% of people don't choose to enroll in companies' automatic billing programs, per MarketWatch.

"There's good opportunity across a range of things that people pay for on a recurring basis," he said. "What I know we can do in a very unique way is to integrate the power of voice and AI into this."

The Amazon Pay push is part of a race by tech companies to carve out space in the online payment market.

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People will be able to be notified when it is time to pay their utility bills via Alexa. The company anticipates that this Amazon Pay capacity will be in 95% of zip codes by the end of 2019.

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