Neji Tawo, the founder of boutique software development company Wiscount Corporation, says he was inspired by his dad to become an engineer. When Tawo was a kid, his dad tasked him with coming up with a formula to calculate the gas in the fuel tanks at his family’s station. Tawo then created an app for gas stations to help prevent gas siphoning.
\nThe seed of the idea for Tawo’s latest venture came from a different source: a TV ad for a charity. Frustrated by his experience filling out donation forms, Tawo sought an alternative, faster way to complete such transactions. He settled on voice.
\nTawo’s PayTalk, which is one of the first products in Amazon’s Black Founders Build with Alexa Program, uses conversational AI to carry out transactions via smart devices. Using the PayTalk app, users can do things like find a ride, order a meal, pay bills, purchase tickets and even apply for a loan, Tawo says.
\n\u201cWe see the opportunity in a generation that’s already using voice services for day-to-day tasks like checking the weather, playing music, calling friends and more,\u201d Tawo said. \u201cAt PayTalk, we feel voice services should function like a person \u2014 being capable of doing several things from hailing you a ride to taking your delivery order to paying your phone bills.\u201d<\/p>\n
PayTalk is powered by out-of-the-box voice recognition models on the frontend and various API connectors behind the scenes, Tawo explains. In addition to Alexa, the app integrates with Siri and Google Assistant, letting users add voice shortcuts like \u201cHey Siri, make a reservation on PayTalk.\u201d
\n\u201cMyself and my team have bootstrapped this all along the way, as many VCs we approached early on were skeptical about voice being the device form factor of the future. The industry is in its nascent stages and many still view it with skepticism,\u201d Tawo said. \u201cWith the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shift to doing more remotely across different types of transactions (i.e. ordering food from home, shopping online, etc.), we \u2026 saw that there was increased interest in the use of voice services. This in turn boosted demand for our product and we believe that we are positioned to continue to expand our offerings and make voice services more useful as a result.\u201d
\nTawo’s pitch for PayTalk reminded me much of Viv, the startup launched by Siri co-creator Adam Cheyer (later acquired by Samsung) that proposed voice as the connective tissue between disparate apps and services. It’s a promising idea \u2014 tantalizing, even. But where PayTalk is concerned, the execution isn’t quite there yet.\u00a0
\nThe PayTalk app is only available for iOS and Android at the moment, and in my experience with it, it’s a little rough around the edges. A chatbot-like flow allows you to type commands \u2014 a nice fallback for situations where voice doesn’t make sense (or isn’t appropriate) \u2014 but doesn’t transition to activities particularly gracefully. When I used it to look for a cab by typing the suggested \u201cbook a ride\u201d command, PayTalk asked for a pickup and dropoff location before throwing me into an Apple Maps screen without any of the information I’d just entered.
\nThe reservation and booking functionality seems broken as well. PayTalk walked me through the steps of finding a restaurant, asking which time I’d like to reserve, the size of my party and so on. But the app let me \u201cconfirm\u201d a table for 2 a.m. at SS106 Aperitivo Bar \u2014 an Italian restaurant in Alberta \u2014 on a day the restaurant closes at 10 p.m.
\nImage Credits: PayTalk
\nOther \u201ccategories\u201d of commands in PayTalk are very limited in what they can accomplish \u2014 or simply nonfunctional. I can only order groceries from two services in my area (Downtown Brooklyn) at present \u2014 MNO African Market and Simi African Foods Market. Requesting a loan prompts an email with a link to Glance Capital, a personal loan provider for gig workers, that throws a 404 error when clicked. A command to book \u201cluxury services\u201d like a yacht or \u201csea plane\u201d (yes, really) fails to reach anything resembling a confirmation screen, while the \u201cpay for parking\u201d command confusingly asks for a zone number.
\nTo fund purchases through PayTalk (e.g. parking), there’s an in-app wallet. I couldn’t figure out a way to transfer money to it, though. The app purports to accept payment cards, but tapping on the \u201cUse Card\u201d button triggers a loading animation that quickly times out.
\nI could go on. But suffice it to say that PayTalk is in the very earliest stages of development. I began to think the app had been released prematurely, but PayTalk’s official Twitter account has been advertising it for at least the past few months.
\nPerhaps PayTalk will eventually grow into the shoes of the pitch Tawo gave me, so to speak \u2014 Wiscount is kicking off a four-month tenure at the Black Founders Build with Alexa Program. In the meantime, it must be pointed out that Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri are already capable of handling much of what PayTalk promises to one day accomplish.<\/p>\n
The battle for voice recognition inside vehicles is heating up<\/p>\n