Amazon Pay for Alexa

Amazon Pay

The Challenge

Amazon Pay wanted to take their existing web check out functionality to create a seamless payment experience on Alexa. The current options to transact from non-Amazon companies on Alexa were cumbersome and required customers to link an account with the Alexa skill developer. The goal of the Amazon Pay speechlet on Alexa is to empower developers and customers by allowing end users to purchase any good or service on Alexa from any company using the payment method stored in their Amazon account.

 

High level system flow of design assets I created including conversational/voice design on Alexa and transaction management on Amazon.com

 
 

Mobile app flow allows users to update user account payment preferences

Alexa app payment cards makes accessing transaction information easy

 

My Role

I took this project over from a designer leaving the team and led it solo until launch. I was responsible for all touch points for customers and skill developers including voice flows, user testing, developer management tools, and Alexa app assets. The end experience is a quick conversation with Alexa, but in order to support that I had to create registration and management tools for skill developers.

After launch in 2018, I continued to own the customer experience for multiple years as we added to the experience and made modifications to support changing payment regulations.

Process

Voice commerce is an emerging field and examples of good voice payment experiences are rare. There were four areas I focused on to figure it out:

Vision. The speechlet was designed to unlock a new commerce channel for Amazon Pay. We didn’t know all the future use cases so the design needed to be flexible enough to support one time payments, subscriptions, third party payment processors, and future growth.

Enabling all users. In order for Amazon Pay to succeed on Alexa it needed to be seamless for customers and manageable for skill developers. I had to determine what features needed to support customization and where Amazon Pay could standardize to reduce skill developer effort.

Recovery. Checkout is a small part of customer’s larger experience and I had to create a UX that seamlessly fit into any Alexa skill experience. When payment issues happen Amazon Pay needs to handle it gracefully and help customers recover quickly.

International. Amazon Pay planned to launch internationally to support Alexa users in all regions. To support this I managed translations of the voice experience as well as regional differences in legal and payment regulations.

 

Voice flow I designed for a functional Alexa skill my team released on GitHub to help developers understand how to use Amazon Pay and provide a good customer experience.

 

My design documentation includes complete system flows, voice design prompts, permission management, device visual interfaces, Alexa app cards, and more.

 

Outcome

Amazon Pay speechlet launched in the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) in the US, EU and JP in 2018 and is used by internal and external developers in all Alexa channels (Alexa app, Echo devices, etc.). By using Amazon Pay, any customers can checkout on Alexa with no account setup - if the they have an Amazon.com account, they can use Amazon Pay. It powers all types of transactions on Alexa including donating to charity, getting movie tickets, reordering coffee, and purchasing at gas stations. This launch met strategic goals for Amazon Pay, supports other internal Alexa teams, and resulted in new business partnerships with payment aggregators. Since launch I continue to improve the experience as new capabilities for Alexa device screen UI, conversational machine learning, and increased customer authentication are released.

 

Companies and organization that have developed skill on Alexa using Amazon Pay.