U.S. Bank executives attend the Consumer Electronics Show to discover new technology that could have applications within the financial services industry – tech the bank’s innovation teams should pursue.

Last week at the consumer technology event Las Vegas, U.S. Bank Chief Innovation Officer Don Relyea and Head of Applied Foresights Todder Moning explored metaverse technologies, new commerce channels and embedded payments capabilities, Moning told Bank Automation News.

For example, one demo at CES analyzed faces with AI in order to recommend skincare products, Relyea told BAN, noting the importance for banks to embed AI into customer experiences, which can lead to new retail points of sale and other opportunities for financial institutions.

“We need to be prepared with open banking, API solutions and friendly developer tools that can be integrated into those new commerce channels. We want to be right in the middle of that point of sale,” he said.

To stay ahead of this innovation, U.S. Bank’s research and development teams work with human machine interface, blockchain, AI and autonomy to start developing and concepting new technology based on CES findings, Relyea said.

One example of an innovation by the $591 billion bank that was inspired by CES attendance is the bank’s voice assistant, Smart Assistant, which launched in 2020 after nearly a decade of trial and error, Relyea said. “Now we’re one of the first to have a Spanish-speaking wizard system, but that’s because we build prototypes and we failed and learned along the way.”

U.S. Bank plans to expand its language offerings in the next three to five years to continue building on the Smart Assistant technology, Sierra Fontana, user experience designer of the Smart Assistant previously said.

Bank Automation Summit US 2023, taking place March 2-3 in Charlotte, is a crucial event on automation and automation technology in banking. Learn more and register for Bank Automation Summit US 2023.