Month: September 2021

PayPal launches its ‘super app’ combining payments, savings, bill pay, crypto, shopping and more

~ Brandon McGee ~ Leave a comment
  • “PayPal has been talking about its ‘super app’ plans for some time, having recently told investors its upcoming digital wallet and payments app had been given a go for launch.
  • The enhanced bill pay feature lets customers track, view and pay bills from thousands of companies, including utilities, TV and internet, insurance, credit cards, phone and more
  • Via a Synchrony Bank partnership, PayPal Savings will offer a high-yield savings account with a 0.40% Annual Percentage Yield (APY)
  • It now features a personalized dashboard offering an overview of the customer’s account. The wallet tab lets users manage Direct Deposits and connect funding sources like bank accounts and debit and credit cards alongside the ability to enroll in PayPal’s own debit, credit and cash cards.
  • A finance tab provides access to the high-yield savings and the previously available crypto capabilities, which allows users to buy, hold and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin.
  • The payments tab, meanwhile, will hold much of PayPal’s traditional feature set, including peer-to-peer payments, international remittances, charitable and nonprofit giving, plus now bill pay and a two-way messaging feature that allows users to request payments
  • Messaging also ties into PayPal’s new Shopping hub, which is where the company is finally putting to good use its 2019 $4 billion Honey acquisition.
  • ‘We’ll use AI and [machine learning] capabilities to understand what kind of shopping deals are most interesting to customers and continue to develop that over time. They’ll just get smarter and smarter as the product gets more usage,’
  • The new app is laying the groundwork for other new products in the quarters to come. The biggest initiative on its roadmap is a plan to enter the investment space, to rival other mobile investing apps, like Robinhood.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2021/09/21/paypal-launches-its-super-app-combining-payments-savings-bill-pay-crypto-shopping-and-more/amp/

https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet

World’s Best Digital Banks 2021: Round 1

~ Brandon McGee ~ Leave a comment
  • “Since the launching of Bank of America’s Life Plan in October 2020, more than 4 million customers have used it to set and track short- and long-term goals.
  • Underpinned by AI, Fatema has over 700,000 impressions on social media and is the first digital banking assistant to have its own social media account.
  • A year after Bank ABC launched ila, its mobile-only, cloud-based app, the bank’s key performance indicators—including cost-per-acquisition and number of deposits—were 4.5 times higher than expected, proving that delivering what customers want is good business.”

https://www.gfmag.com/magazine/september-2021/worlds-best-digital-banks-2021-round-1

Finovate & Finn AI Host The Conversational Banking Summit This October

~ Brandon McGee ~ Leave a comment
  • “Finn AI, a market leader in Conversational AI chatbots for banks and credit unions, together with Finovate, are launching the Conversational Banking Summit on October 6th, 2021. This virtual event is designed for leaders and practitioners at banks and credit unions to explore how chatbots and virtual assistants are changing the digital banking experience.
  • Banks and credit unions are rapidly adopting Conversational AI; according to Cornerstone Advisors nearly 1 in 5 credit unions plan on buying a chatbot in 2021, with 2 in 5 evaluating a chatbot project at the Board level.”

Finovate & Finn AI Host The Conversational Banking Summit This October

Register Here: https://informaconnect.com/conversational-banking-summit/

AI-powered chatbots: Evolution and expansion

~ Brandon McGee ~ Leave a comment
  • “The $2.2 trillion bank is now deploying Erica as a digital assistant to support live chat agents in call centers as well as employees in commercial banking and wealth investment.
  • ‘Organizations are realizing that they can do things like automate 20% of their search service desk requests from employees and allow people to do something different than automating a few 100 password reset requests in a week,’
  • Chatbot vendor Finn AI saw increased chatbot adoption from COVID as smaller banks began implementing the technology, Jake Tyler, Finn AI chief executive officer told BAN. Among Finn AI’s clients are $521.9 billion Truist Bank, $55.8 billion ATB Financial, $3.2 billion United Federal Credit Union and Canadian challenger bank KOHO, which has raised $113.4 million over seven rounds. Finn AI has raised $14 million to date, according to Crunchbase.
  • ‘COVID has been five years of adoption happening in a year,’ Tyler said. ‘We’re still responding to that. I think what we’ll see over the next few years is just mass adoption of conversational AI.’
  • The Dover Federal Credit Union (DFCU), with more than 43,000 members, was among the financial institutions that adopted an intelligent ‘virtual assistant’ this year. The Delaware-based $465.8 million credit union chose Interface.ai for its call center after the pandemic led to call volumes doubling, said Tyler Kuhn, vice president of marketing & digital experience at DFCU.
  • DFCU plans to add Interface.ai to its website and online/mobile banking services, Kuhn added. Interface.ai markets its ‘out-of-the-box’ solution exclusively to banks and credit unions, counting $4.7 billion Gesa Credit Union, with 250,000 members, among its customers.
  • AI-powered digital assistant provider Kasisto is also seeing more adoption by smaller financial institutions. Kasisto’s partnership with digital banking technology provider NCR has helped, said Stephen Epstein, Kasisto’s chief marketing officer. Among Kasisto’s clients are the $499.3 billion Singaporean multinational banking and financial services firm DBS Bank, Mastercard, $1.9 trillion Wells Fargo and $1.3 trillion TD Bank.
  • Finn AI also changed its pricing to appeal to smaller banks and credit unions, adding three levels of AI-based conversational chatbots in June. The first level is a ‘quick start’ chatbot for small- and mid-sized financial institutions that runs visitors through a public dotcom site for live support to common questions; it’s designed to launch within a month. Level two is for mobile and online banking sites and offers a more concierge approach to help customers. Level three can run across any channel the bank designates for API integration to digital banking platforms that help customers via chat.
  • ‘For sure, it’s what I think most people will have — not a chatbot, but a virtual assistant, in the future and that’s what the virtual assistant will look like. It’s certainly where our product is going,’ he added.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/bankautomationnews.com/allposts/retail/ai-powered-chatbots-evolution-and-expansion/