Walmart debuts voice shopping on the Google Home (WMT)

BI Intelligence

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Walmart announced on Wednesday that its customers are now able to shop on Walmart.com using voice commands via Google Home and Google Home Mini devices.

In addition, Walmart is offering a deal to customers of $25 off a Walmart order when they buy one of the Google devices and link their Walmart account to Google’s online shopping platform, Google Express.

The integration of Google Express and Google Home with Walmart’s Easy Reorder may spur faster adoption of voice ordering among Walmart customers. Walmart revealed plans for this integration back in August, and though it's unclear whether the function is live yet, it promises to be a major boon for voice shopping adoption. That's because Google Home owners are likely to use their devices for reordering items they’ve previously purchased, resulting in repeat orders. Moreover, this will allow Walmart to compete with the simplicity Amazon offers in its purchase steps, with its one-click Buy Now option and Amazon Dash Buttons, for example.

This partnership will also allow Walmart to take advantage of Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. Since Google will have access to Walmart customers' purchase histories, and other valuable data points, it will be able to push personalized promotions to these shoppers. Personalized promotions, combined with the ease of voice ordering, may encourage time-pressed shoppers to purchase more through these devices, thereby driving up e-commerce sales for Walmart.

A revolution in payments and banking is beginning as virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa gain the abilities of cashiers, personal shoppers, and bank tellers.

Already, Siri can help users make peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers with Venmo, Alexa can pay off Capital One credit card bills, and Google Assistant can let users shop with their voice from nearby stores. 

This is just the beginning. Today, 18 million US consumers have made a voice payment, and BI Intelligence projects that figure will quadruple over the next five years. 

Dan Van Dyke, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on voice payments that:

• Shares current and projected adoption of voice payments.
• Outlines voice payments and banking integrations on the market.
• Examines growth drivers and barriers to consumers' voice payments adoption.
• Provides strategies for successfully deploying voice interfaces. 

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