August Access Expands In-Home Delivery Beyond Walmart

An expanded delivery platform from Assa Abloy’s smart lock startup will now allow merchants to offer in-home deliveries to their customers, TechCrunch reports.

Months after a test with Walmart, August Home is rolling out August Access with its courier partner, Deliv. Available to those with a smart lock from August, Emtek or Yale, the service will appear as another delivery option for merchants that participate in the program.

When a Deliv courier rings a customer’s doorbell, a notification gets sent to the August mobile app. If a consumer is not at home to let the courier in, the courier can use a one-time passcode to enter the home and make the delivery.

August Home’s announcement comes a few months after Amazon launched Amazon Key, a service for Amazon Prime subscribers that facilitates unattended in-home deliveries. Through Amazon’s In-Home Kit, which includes Amazon Cloud Cam and a smart lock compatible with the service, users are able to monitor in-home deliveries through an app on their phones or through other compatible devices.

Amazon’s service also offers keyless access for friends and relatives of users. In the future, third-party service providers — such as cleaners or pet sitters — will be integrated directly through the application, the company announced at the time.

Whether services like Amazon Key or August Home are accepted by consumers in time is yet to be seen. A SurveyMonkey poll done on behalf of Recode last year found that about 58 percent of Amazon Prime customers would definitely not buy Amazon Key — only slightly less than the 61 percent of all U.S. adults who wouldn’t buy the product.

Among Prime subscribers, only 5 percent said they would definitely buy Amazon Key, while only 4 percent of all U.S. shoppers said they would. Nearly 60 percent of respondents had Prime subscriptions.

For those who would buy Amazon’s product, convenience and novelty of the device were key factors, with some even calling it “genius.” Those who would not purchase it often mentioned privacy and security concerns.