EXCLUSIVE—With mobile banking services offered at the majority of financial institutions, innovating the digital space is becoming more important in the fintech ecosystem, especially for smaller players like regional banks or credit unions.

So, how can these smaller institutions move their digital platforms beyond the simplest (and expected) mobile banking service?

“First off, we need to begin to change the mindset,” Jamie Dominguez, director of product management for financial technology provider Fiserv told Bank Innovation. “Digital isn’t just about mobile and online, it’s really about a fluid experience.”

This mindset requires financial institutions to look at “the lines between the digital and physical world,” Dominguez said, and to stop managing the two as “separate entities.” With that in mind, Fiserv is focusing more on bringing new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and biometrics, to the physical branches of its clients—especially for credit unions, which need to provide a seamless digital consumer experience to compete with larger financial institutions.

“We definitely know that branches are going to stick around,” Dominguez said of Fiserv’s focus on the physical world.

In 2018, the company will continue to offer features like its Cardfree Cash service, which was first rolled out in 2016 and relies on NFC technology, as well as its “Verifast” biometric solution, which relies on “palm-vein” technology to verify a user’s identity — both solutions that will better connect a consumer’s digital banking experience to their physical one, Dominguez said.

These offerings tie into to Fiserv’s focus on “much tighter integration between the worlds—it relies on infrastructure. [Fiserv] is investing in our infrastructure, because you have to have a good foundation,” he said.

The company will also be experimenting with some additional technologies in the new year, Dominguez said, which could better augment the consumer experience.

“Voice banking [is something] we’re looking into incorporating into different solutions that we offer,” he said, which could be done by adding support for devices such as Alexa, though no timeline for that support was announced.

The real goal, Dominguez said, is to “make the customer experience more fluid” in order to erase the idea that the physical and digital banking worlds are separate from each other.

“Credit unions are thinking that if they’re offering mobile banking, that’s digital,” Dominguez said. “Maybe that was true five years ago, but now? Digital isn’t just the technology.”

[Note: Bank Innovation and Fiserv collaborate on the INV Fintech technology accelerator.]

Learn more about digital banking and biometric technology at Bank Innovation 2018 in San Francisco on March 5-6. Request your invitation here.