Skip to main content

You could one day send money to a friend simply by asking Alexa

As easy as it is to receive money these days, what with the emergence of services like Venmo and Zelle, it’s also getting alarmingly easy to just send your money away. Now, it’s getting easier. Amazon’s Alexa may just be able to help you transfer money to a bank, your landlord, or your friends — and while that is obviously convenient, it could also be a little too convenient. After all, now that you don’t even have to take out a credit card in order to make a payment, what’s to stop you from buying the world (other than your bank account)?

The functionality, which hasn’t been officially launched yet, would come from Daon. As CNET reports, it’s a Virginia-based company that creates biometric software for governments and banks. Now, it reportedly built a way for financial institutions to allow customers to send money to just about anyone using their voice and an artificial intelligence assistant. But don’t worry — this is only a one-way street. So just because your brother think you owe him money doesn’t mean that he can tell Alexa that you ought to send him $20.

The company says that it’s in talks with “major financial institutions who are interested in pursuing [the function] as a new service.” Apparently, these institutions plan to release the new Alexa skill sometime in the next nine to 18 months.

“Our banking and financial customers are keen to provide this for their consumers,” Daon CEO Tom Grissen told CNET. As it stands, Alexa can already help you with certain aspects of your financials. For example, you can pay off a credit card or make a loan payment using voice apps for banks including Capital One, Ally Bank, and American Express. But even these forward-looking institutions have yet to make it possible for you to send money to someone else via your voice.

This makes sense, of course — if just anyone could tell Alexa to send someone money, bank accounts across the world would soon be drained. But Daon plans to protect against that by first having account holders adding potential recipients as payees online. Then, you would also have to authenticate any command made — this authentication method could take many forms, including a fingerprint or PIN. One day, Alexa may even be able to authenticate a command using voice recognition, but seeing as developers can’t access user’s audio quite yet, this functionality is still a ways away.

Editors' Recommendations

Lulu Chang
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
Alexa launches Grow a Tree Skill for Earth Day
A worker replanting a tree outside.

April is Earth Month, and in honor of the celebration, Amazon is teaming up with the environmental charity One Tree Planted. Through this partnership, Amazon will donate money to the charity to help with its reforestation campaign. The partnership will culminate in $1 million dollars donated, 1 million trees planted, and additional money from Alexa users for the rest of 2022.

If you’re not familiar with the One Tree Planted organization, it is a charity that has planted over 40 million trees since 2014. Since trees are essential in creating clean air and water, as well as a healthy environment, One Tree Planted wants to make it easy for anyone to help plant more. The organization has also been an AmazonSmile partner organization that allows Amazon customers to quickly donate to the charity when shopping on Amazon.com.

Read more
New Samsung and IBM discoveries could one day produce ultra-efficient chips
The new IBM and Samsung semiconductor design.

IBM and Samsung revealed that they are working on a new joint project: The creation of a new semiconductor design.

The goal of the joint efforts of these two companies is to create a new standard of ultra-energy-efficient chips.

Read more
Is your Amazon Echo, Alexa, or Ring down today? You aren’t alone
Amazon Echo Show 15 hanging vertically on the wall.

If you've tried to use your Alexa or Ring device this morning only to receive no response, don't worry -- it's not just you. Amazon Web Services, the cloud-computing backbone of Amazon.com and large portions of the internet, is experiencing outages this morning that are affecting thousands of users.

But it's not just Amazon-powered smart devices. There are thousands of outage reports for Disney+, as well as games like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, League of Legends, and others. You might notice that your Alexa smart assistant doesn't respond, or just says she doesn't know what went wrong. Even using your Alexa app to activate smart devices might not work.

Read more