Japan’s Mizuho Bank has teamed up with Amazon and Facebook to experiment with artificial intelligence (AI) and chat bot interfaces.
Working in Silicon Valley alongside fellow Japanese companies Information Services International – Dentsu and the Nomura Research Institute, the bank conducted experiments for financial communication services with Facebook’s bot and Amazon’s Echo platform.
The tests by the company come as more retail banks look to chat interfaces and voice recognition-based authentication to reduce friction in consumer mobile and online banking.
Mizuho says it worked with Facebook’s bot platform to develop a new messenger prototype that could guide customers visiting its website through new account opening procedures.
It worked with Amazon Echo, which is not currently available in Japan, to allow customers to confirm the balance of an account through voice command. Mizuho says it will launch this service to Japanese bank-account holders in the US at a later date.
For the trial the firm also worked alongside AppSocially, a US-based conversational user interfaces (CUI) developer, early-stage VC 500 Startups and WiL, a VC firm promoting collaboration between startups and large corporates.
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