Amazon’s Alexa seems to have caught the fancy of developers. In January 2016 there were 130 Alexa skills; by 2017-end it was 25,000, & today it is at 40,000.
And in May 2017, Amazon initiated “Alexa Developer Rewards” payments to the builders of the most popular, engaging skills in a variety of categories, starting with games. This month, Amazon has sped up that process. It’s announced the general availability in the US for in-skill purchasing, which allows the creator of a skill to sell Content to an Alexa user–both one-off purchases & monthly or yearly subscriptions, with the entire transaction handled inside the skill via voice on a device such as an Echo or a 3rd party Alexa-compatible gadget. Developers get 70% of the price paid by users, & Amazon collects the balance as its reward for facilitating the transaction. In addition, the company is opening up the ability for sellers of real world goods & services to receive payment via Alexa using the Amazon Pay service. Incidentally, the new features were in preview mode since November 2017.
