Mobile banking, along with its online digital partner, now represents the budding face of banking. Yet, not all mobile features and innovation are catching on just yet at all financial institutions.
“Credit Union members increasingly prefer mobile banking as their primary digital banking channel,” Tucker Stovall, director of digital solutions for Symitar, a division of Monett, Mo.-based Jack Henry & Associates, said. “We are witnessing a shift away from simple mobile acceptance and adoption to a true mobile-first preference.”
Austin, Texas-based digital banking provider Malauzai’s data held 54% registered and using mobile. “But there’s still a greater percentage (73%) on average for Internet registrants,” Robb Gaynor, chief product officer for Malauzai, said. However, those percentages are shifting.
Stovall suggested there is increasing depth and sophistication of financial transactions available from mobile phones, such as biometric technology development and real-time behavioral modeling.
Biometrics, for example, is becoming such a user centric authentication mechanism that users are going to expect to see it in all their secure applications, Scott Hess, vice president of user experience, consulting and innovation, at Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv, noted. “I think it’s going to be table stakes.”
But it is the marriage of voice biometrics, artificial intelligence and digital assistant technologies, like Alexa, that has people talking. Voice-activated technology appears ready to play a significant role in digital banking. Initial deployments have already started.
Duluth, Ga.-based NCR Corp. announced $346 million Scarborough, Maine-based Town & Country FCU now enables users to securely manage their personal bank account information using Amazon Alexa-enabled devices. The pilot program, described by NCR as the first credit union linking Alexa capabilities with accounts and account management functionality, will be open to NCR Digital Insight solutions customers in the U.S.
Credit unions piloting voice banking with Fiserv, such as $17.3 billion Tukwila, Wash.-based BECU, currently just focus on authenticating members through a spoken PIN, balancing checks, and account activity updates. “These three are the most common digital banking activities, and are less prone to risk than money-movement activities,” Hess said. Other Fiserv voice banking features available include internal transfers, bill and P2P payments, ATM/Branch location, card controls, and product info.
Read the full article in the Oct. 25 edition of CUTimes.
