If you walk into HSBC‘s flagship New York branch, the chances that you will be greeted by a robot are pretty high. The bank’s innovation team, which unveiled its SoftBank Robotics-run robot Pepper yesterday, hopes that this will draw more traffic into the branch, and thus increase business.

The innovation team at HSBC US has been a strong advocate for the bank branch. In the New York branch specifically, the bank has spent time and money to make the branch as elegant as possible. It even renovated a section of the office for its Jade customers (its most exclusive card clients) to encourage these customers to visit the branch.

With the launch of Pepper in its branch, HSBC is hoping to encourage all its customers to visit. The branch currently gets between 100-to-200 visitors per day, Pepper is expected to drive that traffic up by about 20%, Pablo Sanchez, regional head of retail banking and wealth management at HSBC in the U.S. and Canada, told Bank Innovation.

Jeremy Balkin, head of innovation at the bank,said that the plan is to have “more than one” robot in the branch to help customers set up appointments, provide tutorials or inform customers about various products and services.

“These robots are not meant to replace people on our staff,” Balkin told Bank Innovation. “The robots are meant to decrease a customer’s wait-time, and improve customer engagement.”

Although Balkin could not provide a specific timeline, he said that HSBC has been working with SoftBank Robotics since before February on this project. Balkin could not disclose the exact amount of time or money the bank spent on the project, but Sanchez told Bank Innovation that the project came under the bank’s $131 million U.S. Retail Transformation Program.

SoftBank Robotics head of studio, Omar Abdelwahed, told Bank Innovation that each robot costs $25,000 for a three-year lease. HSBC will have at least two robots in its New York branch. The exact number was not disclosed. Whether the bank will be adding robots across other branches is not clear. Balkin and Sanchez declined to comment on the matter.

For SoftBank Robotics, HSBC is its first bank client. The robot is typically used in industries like hospitality and retail. Abdelwahed told Bank Innovation that SoftBank plans on adding additional features like facial recognition, biometrics to the robot along the way.

“This is not a gimmick, we don’t want people thinking of us as a robot bank,” HSBC’s Sanchez said.

At least for now, customers might be inclined to visit the branch to interact with the robot, but whether it will be a sustainable strategy to drive traffic or whether the number of branch goers will go back to the current numbers once the Pepper craze has fizzles out, remains to be seen.

Bank Innovation filmed a demo with HSBC’s Pepper below: