Community

If everyone that deploys chatbots takes the trouble that CapitalOne has taken to learn what their chatbots have learned, chatbots will replace humans even faster than I'd imagined in Can Chatbots Replace Humans?

Coincidentally, on my adjacent browser tab, I have a press release from Persado, the leading provider of AI-generated marketing language for top global brands. Persado found that there were 250 ways of writing "Call now". That's beaten hollow by Eno's learning that there 2200 ways that customers have asked for balances!

I agree about the convenience of cheques. In fact, IME, cheque was the unsung hero of #CashlessIndia at the peak of #CurrencySwitch last year. But I disagree that their use is coming down, if that's the subtext of your post. In my post Why Branch And Digital Channels Will Coexist Forever, I've recounted my conversation with a banker, according to whom increase in use of cheques in business banking is a major reason why her bank is expanding its branch network.

@Anon: TY for correcting my impression that MINT pioneered account aggregation / PFM. 

Given some of the humans I interact with everyday, I wish Gartner's prediction came true tomorrow. Can Chatbots Replace Humans?

Most of my branch visits are memorable encounters, alright. But somehow they remind me of #FailWhale! Wish you’d included the image of the said Big Whale – if not for visual inspiration, then at least for mental aspiration!!

Brilliant move. When I first heard about it, I found the cause very compelling even though I was a foreigner. I predict that they'll double the donation pre-set levels next year.  

Anyone who thinks this is a "new initiative" needs a loud alarm clock to wake them up. Once they wake up, they might find out that MINT pioneered the PFM / MoMMA / Online Aggregation product category in 2006. In the decade following MINT's launch of its PFM website, several fintechs have entered and exited this space viz. WeSabe in USA and Kublax in UK. HDFC Bank introduced this in India around 5 years ago and shut it down a year later probably because it failed to gain traction.

Handing over your online banking credentials to a VC-funded startup is a bad idea to begin with, made worse by the tripe delivered by them in return. Nevertheless, I'll go back to using the first PFM app that fulfills the wishlist I've given in my blog post Innovative Fintechs Don’t Need No PSD2 Regulation.

Talking about security, when I hand over my online banking creds to a bank, I'm only worried about the ability of the bank to protect it from hackers. Whereas, when it comes to a VC-funded fintech startup, I'm not sure the startup itself wouldn't use it for illicit purposes when, for example, it needs to shore up its numbers before its next fund raise. If anybody thinks that's "old school", they need to have their head examined after being woken up by the loud alarm clock.

@JamesStickland:

I don't refute the "first stepping stone on that path" argument. But it's very easy to spend billions on a myriad of stepping stones without achieving the end result. Therefore, we should also explore in parallel other means to achieve the same end. It's quite possible that an approach other "banking the unbanked" turns out to be cheaper and more effective at achieving the "upward mobility" result. 

As I highlighted in How To Really Kill Cash, cash is still the only truly realtime, irrevocable retail payment method in the world (Source: DB Research). Cash is also the only form of payment that accomplishes transfer of value between payor and payee without any dependency on bank, hardware, software, network, battery, and other third parties.

@AlexanderPeschkoff:

LOL but stranger things have happened viz. "Reach checkout; enter PIN to get past lockscreen; locate mobile wallet app; locate card; scan QR code; blah blah blah". Mobile wallet simply won't work in a supermarket where there's a long queue. But the last year's re/demonetization in India provided a good learning opportunity: Most other types of stores - e.g. apparel stores, bookstores, mom-and-pop stores - don't have such a long queue at checkout. Despite the fact that a mobile wallet entails a longer-drawn out process compared to cash / plastic card, I think it's still quite usable at many stores.