Wal-Mart is about to encroach even further on to Amazon‘s turf.

The big-box retailer will soon offer customers the ability to order hundreds of thousands of its products by voice with the help of Google.

The partnership is another critical step as Wal-Mart looks to advance its e-commerce operations and stay competitive with Amazon and its powerful, voice-enabled network, Alexa.

While other retailers are already working with Google to sell their products using Google Express and Google’s home assistant devices — notably Target, Costco, Whole Foods, Ulta and Kohl’s, among others — none of these companies thus far have allowed shoppers to link up a preexisting user account with Google Express on the back end.

Wal-Mart also will be offering the largest number of items through the Express platform.

Beginning in September, Wal-Mart shoppers can link their Wal-Mart accounts to Google Express and quickly order — either through voice on Google Home or by shopping on Google Express. By linking a shopper’s past Wal-Mart purchase history, Google will be able to more quickly learn the customer’s shopping patterns and recommend suitable products.

Right now, a customer can say, “Ok Google, buy peanut butter.” Google will then offer up the product it thinks the customer would like the most.

But Google is just guessing, explained Brian Elliott, general manager of Google Express. He explained the process of going back and forth, asking if a customer wants this, or that can be kind of clunky.

Once the partnership with Wal-Mart starts, however, Google can scan the customer’s purchase history, and say back: “I know you bought Skippy 16-ounce from Walmart last month. It’s $7.99. Do you want that?”

That’s the powerful part of the combination. And while other retailers are on the platform, Wal-Mart will be the first one with this capability.

“It makes sense for us to team up with Google,” Wal-Mart’s head of e-commerce, Marc Lore, said in a blog post. “They’ve made significant investments in natural language processing and artificial intelligence to deliver a powerful voice shopping experience.”

“We know this means being compared side-by-side with other retailers, and we think that’s the way it should be,” Lore added. “An open and transparent shopping universe is good for customers.”

Starting Wednesday, Google will also begin offering free delivery on Google Express orders, so long as the order is above each retailer’s minimum threshold. Wal-Mart, for example, will have a threshold of $35 for free delivery when its deal is live.

“We’re thrilled to partner with one of the most popular stores in America to help make your shopping faster and easier,” Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s senior vice president of ads and commerce, said in a statement.

And with Google’s platform, there’s never a membership required, Ramaswamy pointed out.

With more consumers beginning to rely on devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home in their homes, it’s easy to see why retailers want to stay on top of the trend. Amazon had a leg up with its integrated system, but Wal-Mart doesn’t plan on being left behind.

Wal-Mart, with its brick-and-mortar fleet, and Amazon, with its e-commerce operations, have been neck and neck as far as the retail world is concerned, each company rolling out fresh initiatives to stay ahead of the other.

Wal-Mart acquired Jet.com last fall, beefing up its digital arm. Post-Jet merger, the retailer grew online sales 60 percent during the second quarter of 2017, following 63 percent growth in the first quarter of the year.

For now, Jet’s products, which includes those sold by Modcloth and Bonobos, won’t be available through Google Express.

Meantime, Amazon is looking to grow its real estate portfolio, preparing to seal a deal and acquire grocer Whole Foods. Whole Foods shareholders vote on the deal Wednesday.

Come September, both companies will offer consumers the ability to order a catalog of products through voice shopping. And Wal-Mart’s Marc Lore has said, “This is just the beginning.”

“Next year, we will also leverage our 4,700 U.S. stores and our fulfillment network to create customer experiences that don’t currently exist within voice shopping anywhere else,” Lore wrote in his Wednesday blog post.

This will include using voice to pick up orders in store and using voice shopping to purchase fresh groceries, he explained.

Separately, Wal-Mart also has been testing a pilot delivery service with Uber, which was expanded to additional cities earlier this week.