Update, 09:30 a.m.: has officially announced shopping through Home. This article has been updated with the news.
Assistant already helps us organize our shopping lists find out about things we’re interested in, but it stops short at actually letting us buy items. th a new feature rolling to Home, that’s about to change.
has announced that it is adding hs-free shopping to Express, letting you order household staples through the Home speaker. First discovered deep in the beta version of the App back in nuary, a new yment option has gone live in the Assistant settings, letting you set up a preferred method for voice-activated ordering, a major step in Assistant’s fight against Amazon’s exa.
Head into the Settings menu of the Home app you’ll see the new option for yments under the Account section. This feature is separate from Android y, so tapping it will guide you through a series of steps that lets you store credit or debit cards that can be accessed by Assistant.
At the end of the process, you’ll see a y through your Assistant toggle that will need to be turned blue in order to activate the feature. Additionally, Home shoppers will need to enable “rsonal results” in the More tab of the Home app settings.
So far, Assistant only works with Express, an online marketplace of more than 40 popular stores such as lgreens, Costco, Toys R Us. You can order things costing between $4 $100 just by asking, Home will give you a total, including tax shipping, before you agree to purchase it.
As part of the launch, is eliminating shipping service fees when ordering with Home, which runs through April 30. Orders placed for Costco items without a membership won’t incur the usual access fees during this period either.
ile the yment settings can be accessed via the Assistant settings on xel phones the app, it appears as though voice ordering is limited to Home doesn’t include its phones or other devices integrated with Assistant, such as Android ar 2.0 watches.
Speak ‘n shop: Amazon Echo users have long been able to order things from Amazon without lifting a finger, this new feature is clearly a move to directly compete with one of exa’s best qualities. ile tying it to Express certainly limits its usefulness, building payments into Assistant is an important step in the virtual bot’s development. However, it’s surprising that doesn’t seem to have included a vocal passcode option to protect against unintended toy purchases by our chatty kids.
