• by Chuck Martin , April 18, 2018

If banks would enable Amazon’s digital voice assistant Alexa, more than half of consumers would use it to make routine banking requests, according to a new study.

Nearly half (47%) of consumers would use Alexa to check account balances and review recent transactions (43%), according to the study, comprising a survey of 2,100 U.S. adults representative of the overall population conducted by Javelin Strategy & Research.

Consumers also would use Alexa to make a bill payment (39%), transfer money between accounts (35%), contact customer service with a question (33%) or send money to another person (27%).

“The challenge for banks is in differentiating the voice value proposition from other digital delivery options,” stated Emmett Higdon, director of digital banking at Javelin Strategy & Research. “Most consumers would not immediately mention banking as one of the reasons they purchased a connected home speaker. The bar is high for emerging channels such as home voice banking to deliver a compelling experience for day-to-day transactional tasks.”

Consumer adoption will grow slowly due to security concerns and preferences for online or mobile channels, Higdon said.