Pay your credit card bill using the Amazon Echo

Too busy whipping up a soufflé to check your bank balance online? You can now ask Amazon's Echo devices to give you the info, thanks to a partnership with Capital One. You just need to say "Alexa, ask Capital One for my Quicksilver card balance" or "Alexa, ask Capital One to pay my credit card bill," for instance. The voice assistant can already turn on your lights, play Spotify music, get you an Uber and check election results. However, Capital One is the first credit card or banking service to work with the expanding family of devices, which are only sold in the US.

If this sounds like a security nightmare, Capital One told the Associated Press that an additional check is enabled by default. You say a four-digital personal key, after which you'll have five minutes to do any transactions before you're locked out again (users can disable the function, however). The service will be switched on today for the Echo, Amazon Tap and the Echo dot, along with Amazon's Fire TV devices. There's no app to download; if you have a Capital One account, you can enable the service and provide your credentials to the Echo app.