Amazon has started letting some customers in the United States shop by text message, sending requests to its Alexa for Shopping assistant instead of opening the Amazon app.

The feature began rolling out on 6 November 2026 to a small, invitation-only group of US customers, Amazon said. Invited shoppers receive a text, accept the terms and link a phone number, after which a contact named “Alexa Shopping” appears on their phone. Customers who have not been invited can join a waitlist, and Amazon says millions more will get access in the coming weeks, ahead of Black Friday on 27 November.

The assistant can search for products, compare options using reviews and pricing, build a cart and complete a purchase, working in the background and texting back when the task is done. Shoppers can send a photo of an item or an outfit to find similar listings, ask for up to a year of price history, set a target price for automatic purchase, track price drops, reorder past purchases and check delivery status. A conversation started by text carries over to the Amazon app, the website and Alexa devices.

Amazon launched Alexa for Shopping in May 2026, merging its Rufus shopping chatbot with Alexa+, the generative AI version of its voice assistant. The company says more than 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping in the 12 months before the announcement. An expansion on 29 October added more than 100 conversational shopping and account actions, including lists, registries, Subscribe & Save, memberships and refunds.

Amazon has not said whether the text service runs over SMS, RCS or Apple’s iMessage, whether standard carrier messaging rates apply, or whether advertising will appear in the conversations. Order updates, delivery notifications and deals will eventually land in the same thread, the company said.