Daon is helping to build Alexa’s skillset with a new feature that will allow Amazon’s AI assistant platform to facilitate peer-to-peer money transfers by voice command.

As CNET reports, it isn’t yet as simple as it sounds. A user of one of Amazon’s Echo devices can ask Alexa to open the “Daon Bank” app for a money transfer, but will still need to provide additional authentication using a smartphone, via Daon’s biometric authentication app. Fingerprint, facial, and voice recognition are supported, or a PIN can be entered instead. Once the authentication process is done, the system can go ahead and transfer the money.

While this process still involves the use of a smartphone, Daon says that in the future the system could evolve to support voice-based authentication, allowing the whole money transfer process to be done solely through voice command. That would help it to compete with a similar, PayPal-driven service offered through Apple’s voice-based AI assistant, Siri.

As it stands, it’s already poised to be a functionality that will help Amazon further its ambitions of entering the financial services market, and it will further spread Daon’s already popular biometric authentication technology in the financial services industry. No official bank support for the functionality has yet been announced, but Daon tells CNET that it is currently working with major financial services organizations that are interested in offering Alexa-based payment services, with launches planned somewhere between nine and 18 months from now.

Source: CNET

(Originally posted on FindBiometrics)