Amazon has been on a roll with adding new and exciting, as well as useful, features to their Echo smart speaker, and now the recently announced Echo Dot and Tap Portable speakers. The Echo has slowly but surely been gaining more abilities as Amazon has continued to add new partners to the support platform, finally adding support for Nest and Honeywell smart thermostats, allowing Alexa devices to control the temperature in the home with just your voice. Today Amazon has added yet another feature to its lineup of smart speakers which will let users access their online banking with Capital One accounts.
With this new support, users will be able to complete a handful of different transaction types simply by asking their Alexa-enabled devices to do so, including the ability to ask about a credit card balance as well as pay a credit card bill, inquire about a Quicksilver card balance, and hear about recent transactions made with a Capital One checking account. Although Capital One is the first banking institution to partner up with Amazon and offer this feature to their customers, chances are that Amazon will be seeking to partner up with other major banks to offer the same thing, although no mention has been made about possible future banks.
In addition to the Amazon Echo and the newly launched Echo Dot and Tap smart speakers which are all powered by the Alexa voice assistant, uses will get this feature via the new Amazon Fire TV as well which is also powered by Alexa. Before it can be used however, users will have to go into the Android (or iOS) Alexa app and set up the feature which shouldn’t take long, and then they’ll be able to use voice commands to complete the above-listed tasks. In addition to there being no mention about support for other banks or credit cards, there is also no mention on other supported banking transaction types, so it may be possible that the four transactions listed here will be the only ones that users are able to issue commands for. If you have any of the Alexa-enabled devices that Amazon offers, you’ll be able to open up the Alexa app and configure the banking feature support for Capital One and start using the commands as of today.