BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--After 12 teams and 14 companies participated in a five-week competition to use Alexa and her voice-activated technology to reimagine how consumers interact with their payments and financial services solutions providers, the winners of the 2016 PYMNTS/Alexa Challenge were announced today at noon.

“The 2016 PYMNTS/Alexa Challenge pushed the boundaries of what everyone thought Alexa was able to do, as we all learned how powerful she really is,” said Karen Webster, CEO of PYMNTS.com.

This year’s winners are:

2016 PYMNTS.com/Alexa Challenge Champ: DaVincian Healthcare
The ability to use Alexa as a friendly companion to remind elderly people to take their medications, answer their questions about medications, procure, pay and deliver their medications, and provide updates to concerned family members takes Alexa to a whole new level of utility and value. DaVincian’s practical application of Alexa not only adds value to the health care community, but also provides an important and valuable service to the entire family – changing and saving lives.

“Many of the barriers related to people staying on track with their prescription plan can easily be removed by bringing in simple payment methods from the financial field and novel delivery options,” said Meredith Porter, Chief Medical Officer for DaVincian Healthcare.

Best Use of Technology: Fiserv
Alexa is well equipped to learn skills that can complete the kind of routine financial services tasks that consumers often find time-consuming and tedious. Fiserv’s end-to-end management of a person’s banking and payments lifecycle shows Alexa’s depth and breadth, and how it can be used to remove friction from banking and financial services tasks and hasten their completion in a safe and secure way.

“Our live cloud-based system running our current production digital banking system connected into our Fiserv payments system and developed an Alexa skill that connected the Echo into the system to do the most common and valuable and engaging user stories,” explained Scott Hess, VP Innovations Team at Fiserv.

Easiest to Explain to Mom: USAA
What Mom or Dad doesn’t want a little help to make ends meet? The ability to do so proactively and through the use of Alexa is what USAA demonstrated with their skill. USAA solved the big important problems that confront Moms and Dads every day but few fail to address, problems such as how to find an extra $30 to pay for their kid’s new soccer cleats, or $40 to take the family out for dinner to make the week special.

“Often we find that our customers are really struggling to make their finances work. So what better time to help them in that decision process of what money to spend, how much money to spend and when to save then when they are shopping,” said Darrius Jones, AVP Enterprise Innovation at USAA.

Most Creative: Feasty/Zipscene
Lots of skills drive Alexa to serve up a list of restaurants in the area of the requestor. But it was the combination of data, dining and Alexa to serve up custom recommendations based on preferences and offers in the area that propelled Feasty to the top slot.

“We partnered to create an Alexa skill set that provides consumers with an easy-to-use intelligent support system that each of us makes every day,” said Jeff Bickel, Chief Product Officer for Zipscene.

Most Disruptive: FIS
Millennials are every banker’s dream, but they are also among the hardest group of individuals to service. The FIS application follows a millennial through their life and enables them to avail themself of the kind of budgeting, savings, planning and wealth management tools that will help to prepare for a financial future at every step. This particular skill also gives millennials a more complete picture of what banks can offer by making the search process invisible to them, and simply serving up options based on the needs of that particular millennial at that particular point in time.

“Our skill helps act as an always-available coach for all of life’s needs, not just for the present, but on a go-forward basis. So we really focused our application on how to guide millennials through major financial life events,” explained Doug Brown, FIS’ head of mobile.

Most Likely to Get Traction: Visa
Taking voice-initiated ordering and payment to the next level is about removing the friction associated with using voice to order and pay in situations where it is uncomfortable – and frankly undesirable — to speak a PIN but where authenticating the consumer is obviously critical. Visa’s use of voice biometrics and tokens linked to Visa Checkout solve for that problem and inspires consumer and merchant confidence when transacting using voice anywhere – even in the spa.

“We’ve been playing with Alexa since last November and we have built out a basic bank transaction and money transfer skill for our showcase for Super Bowls,” said Jagdeep Singh Sahota, Sr. Director of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships at Visa.

Those 14 companies — Best Innovation Group (BIG), DaVincian Healthcare, Discover, Exa, Feasty powered by Zipscene, FIS, Fiserv, ONvocal powered by People Power, USAA, Vantiv, Visa and Western Union — dug deep into their innovation bag to solve everything from the $60 billion annual prescription abandonment problem to making checkout abandonment a thing of the past. Some were focused on giving chatbots a run for their money in the customer service arena, while others are using the technology to make financial services more accessible to a variety of customer segments.

The innovations were featured in videos, and people were able to view them and vote on PYMNTS.com over a five-week period. Voters were able to choose from the following categories when voting: Most Creative, Most Disruptive, Best Use Of The Technology, Easiest To Explain To Mom, Most Likely To Get Traction and the penultimate award, the 2016 PYMNTS/Alexa Challenge Champ.

“This was about solving a real problem or reimagining a future for a consumer and the ecosystem that surrounds consumers as they look at new ways to conduct commerce, buy things, solve problems and even manage the health care environment,” Karen Webster said at the unveiling of the solutions two weeks ago.

For more information, visit the Alexa Challenge website.

About PYMNTS.com

PYMNTS.com is reinventing the way in which companies share relevant information about the initiatives that shape the future of payments and commerce and makes news. This powerful B2B platform is the No. 1 site for the payments industry by traffic and the premier source of information about “What’s Next” in payments and commerce. It provides an interactive platform for companies to demonstrate thought leadership, popularize products and, most importantly, capture the mindshare of global decision-makers. For more information, visit the PYMNTS website.