Infosys arm to offer chat-based service to banking customers

Bengaluru, Sep 19 (IANS) IT major Infosys subsidiary EdgeVerve Systems's financial software product Finacle will tie up with financial technology start-up Niki.ai to offer chat-based service to customers of banking clients, it was announced on Tuesday/

"The partnership will enable banks using our Finacle to offer its customers a virtual banking assistant for shopping products and services," said Infosys in a statement here.

Funded by Tata czar Ratan Tata, Unilazer Ventures and SAP.iO, the city-based Niki is an AIbot which converses with banking customers to help them shop for products and services and carry transactions speedily.

Besides booking movie tickets, buses and hotels, the bot helps customers pay utility and phone bills and recharge easily.

"For businesses, the chat bot is a plug-and-play technology that can be integrated everywhere, including operating systems, on messaging platform messenger and on their applications," said the statement.

A software application that runs automated work on the internet, a bot performs tasks that are simple and repetitive. The computer programme is designed to simulate conversation with human users worldwide and a chatbot conducts an artificial conversation via auditory or textual methods as an interactive agent between computers and humans.

"The joint solution from Finacle and Niki.ai will provide a smart-purchasing chatbot by leveraging natural language processing and machine learning to converse with customers and perform online transactions," said the statement.

The bot will comprehend the speech text of a customer and deliver personalised suggestions. The solution will provide banks an opportunity to initiate two-way automated intelligent conversations with customers.

"The joint solution will also enable banking customers to initiate conversations on the bank's online and mobile applications and complete transactions without leaving the chat interface," said the statement.

Services from 25 merchants such as Uber, Ola, BookMyShow, redBus, Cleartrip and Housejoy are pre-integrated with the chat bot.

"As AI technologies mature, they present an opportunity for banks to automate interactions and enhance customer experiences. We provide a virtual assistant that banks can use to expand their e-commerce footprint through a pre-integrated system," Infosys Chief Business Officer Sanat Rao said in the statement.

The partnership will also enable Finacle to provide a virtual assistant that banks can use to expand their commerce footprint through a large pre-integrated ecosystem.

"Partnership with Finacle via FinTech Connect will give us a platform to impact the masses through its clientele. Finacle's experience will help us innovate in banking and commerce products further," Niki.ai Chief Executive Sachin Jaiwal added.