October 13, 2020
Using Alexa to Pay for Gas
You can pay for so many things by voice now that blogging about it seems a little silly. But it’s pretty cool that so many gas pumps are now Alexa-enabled – “Alexa Fuel” – as noted in this voicebot.ai article. Here’s an excerpt:
Drivers can now ask Alexa to handle fuel payments at more than 11,500 Exxon and Mobil gas stations in the U.S. The program, first previewed by Amazon at CES in January, skips the need to use a card or touchpad, relying only on voice commands and some access to the voice assistant.
Getting Alexa to pay for the gas just requires a driver to have some way of communicating with Alexa. That can include cars with Alexa built-in, an Echo Auto device in the car, or just the Alexa app on a smartphone. When they park the car at the pump and ask the voice assistant to pay for gas, Alexa will determine what gas station they are at and the pump number, activating the pump remotely, so the driver simply has to insert the nozzle and start refueling their car. The transaction uses a customer’s existing Amazon Pay account, so there’s no extra sign-in needed, although the user can add a voice PIN if they want. Financial tech giant Fiserv supports the underlying communication between Alexa and the pump and facilitates the actual digital payment.