Alexa Now Allows You to Donate to a Charity Using Your Voice

Raise your voice for a good cause and let Amazon’s Alexa do the rest

By Lulu Chang April 2, 2018

You can have Alexa help you pay off your credit card, so it only makes sense that you also use your favorite smart assistant spend your money for a good cause, too. That’s right, friends — Amazon has added a new skill for Alexa that will allow you to donate to a number of nonprofits with naught but your voice. So if writing a check is too hard or going to a charity’s website is too time-consuming, fret not — being a good Samaritan is now as easy as raising your voice.

There’s nothing particularly life-changing about the way in which the skill works. As you might suspect, in order to get Alexa to donate to the charity of your choice, you’ll say something like, “Alexa, donate $50 to National Public Radio.” Amazon’s smart assistant will then deduct the commanded amount from your linked account, and you’ll go about the rest of your day with a little bounce in your step. Of course,

Just in time to be too late for your 2017 taxes, Amazon’s added a new skill for Alexa that lets users donate with their voice. The command is pretty much as you’d expect — say, “Alexa, donate $20 to the American Cancer Society” and the smart assistant will pull that money from your associated account. In order to ensure that you did, in fact, want to make a donation, Alexa will use a four-digit voice confirmation code. Once a donation has been processed, Amazon will send you an email confirmation, and you’ll also be able to track that information at Amazon Pay.

There are also a number of other security measures in place. For example, Amazon assures its users that it does “not share your payment method information with merchants or charitable organizations that accept Amazon Pay on their websites.” And while your name, email, and address may be given to the nonprofit to which you donate, that organization will not have any access to your credit card information.

Quite a few nonprofits are already on Amazon’s compatible list of organizations, including the ASPCA, the American Cancer Society, and the Tor Project. You can even choose to donate to an institution of higher learning like Bowdoin College. And if you’re unsure of what deserving charity you’d like to help, you can just say, “Alexa, make a donation,” and she’ll help you select a nonprofit.

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