Samsung’s Bixby virtual assistant will soon be able to buy and sell stocks via voice command.

The functionality is currently being developed by DeepSearch, a Korea-based data analytics service whose platform is designed to deliver important information about publicly traded companies to end users. Accordingly, as the Korea Herald reports, the new Bixby capability will not only support stock trading, but will provide information about companies such as revenues and net results on demand, and prompted only with simple user commands.

The functionality is going to require a certain degree of trust from end users, given how sensitive these kinds of transactions can sometimes be. But it’s also a natural extension of Bixby’s financial and commerce capabilities, with the platform having acquired a new shopping system, facilitated through this year’s Samsung Galaxy S9 devices, that allows users to buy certain products just by pointing their cameras at them and taking a picture, with Bixby’s machine vision determining what the item is and Samsung Pay facilitating the transaction.

It isn’t yet clear if Samsung Pay will be used in some way with the forthcoming stock trading functionality, but it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine it, given the efforts of Samsung and rivals like Apple to extend their digital wallet platforms into new financial services functions. In any case, DeepSearch says it expects to finish developing Bixby’s stock trading capability in the first half of next year.

Source: Korea Herald