5 Financial Services Bots Launched at Facebook F8
The 100,000 chatbot-strong platform Facebook Messenger gained a few new friends yesterday, during the social media giant’s F8 Developer conference.
The Messenger platform has become the prime landing space for all kinds of bots, from restaurants to fintech. The platform currently has about 1.2 billion users, making it an ideal place to test out new methods of customer interactions.
Naturally, Bank Innovation’s favorite bots in the mix were fintech-related. Take a look at our top five below:
Wells has been making some serious strides in its mobile apps this past month, the latest of which in a bot form. The bank launched a pilot version of an automated chatbot, of course leveraging artificial intelligence, to help answer user questions. Many banking questions do not really require a branch visit, so a conversational bot can come handy.
Wells switched to Messenger for customer questions back in May 2016, but its new (pilot) bot could help consumers get faster, more personalized answers.
Mastercard showed off three examples of its Masterpass-enabled chatbots, all launching within the coming months.
The three merchants to launch the Masterpass-integrated chatbots were Subway, the Cheesecake Factory, and Fresh Direct.
Subway’s bot is live on the platform today, while Fresh Direct and the Cheesecake Factory rolled out pilot versions, to be replaced with full iterations soon. The integration with Masterpass is set up so users don’t have to leave Messenger in order to pay for purchases.
“Facebook Messenger, it’s an environment consumers are used to. For merchants, it provides real-time engagement, it’s a human-like interaction,” said Tor Opedal, vice president for US Market Development at Mastercard.
Global money transfer service Western Union launched a money transfer bot at the conference yesterday, which enables users to send funds across 200 countries.
The company integrated its cross-border transfer platform into Messenger, which at the moment is available to U.S. users only. The bot will provide customer support (automated) and foreign exchange rates in real time for customers as they move their money.
Everyone’s favorite money transfer service—or at least, Ant Financial’s favorite money transfer service—launched the MoneyGram Sendbot™ yesterday, which allows U.S. customers to send funds to MoneyGram locations worldwide. The company has about 350,000 locations across the U.S.
The Sendbot comes equipped with features like a location finder, and a money tracker.
Credit card provider American Express announced an up-and-coming bot, to be available in the coming months, for card users to answer questions regarding their accounts. The bot is a shiny new upgrade of the original service Amex launched on the Messenger platform in August 2016.
For now, users can pose questions about pending charges, membership rewards, and their balances. The bot does not have any payments features yet.
