How voice payment technology works, how many people use it and is it really a revolution in banking that will change the future?
Era of Connected Customers
Have you heard about Connected Customers? People who are continually linked to information flows and services via smartphones, wearable devices, social networks. They need just-in-time response from everything that is digital around them. And Connected Banking? Connected banking means better customer experience because of closer relations between customers and banks, higher level of trust and openness. Being connected is mindset that make banks reimagine what services they are offering and whether their input is enough for clients. In such a way, new services appear and banking sector begins to apply AI, use voice technology not only to satisfy their clients needs but also to stand out and follow a socially responsible way of serving. They work not only to provide services and receive payments, but help, support and recommend. The example of country which pays a lot attention to it is Australia, an active contributor to digitization of the financial industry and wiring the country with technologies.
That’s why technology in the financial industry is first and foremost helpful hand for clients. In the client oriented society development and improvement is made for clients. Banks which are gone through technology changes will experience benefits, good reputation and more clients.
Voice payments and smart devices
Voice payments are still not totally widespread. However Business Insider’s report on the voice payments estimates that there will be 77.9 million users of voice payments by 2022. Why not link cars to bank accounts? Tesla is linking cars to a connected home with the help of data-over-voice technology. Tesla in partnership with Alexa are finding voice technology solutions for Tesla models. They are going to provide drivers of cars with Alexa smart systems with the option to use voice assistants to pay for the fuel at gas stations in the U.S. The transaction uses Alexa pay account drivers do not need to swipe their credit cards or log-in. Imagine you are driving fast to your child’s school performance and once you remind yourself you had to place a monthly sum for your credit card and today’s the last day. You call Alexa or Siri to check the balance on your bank account and conduct payment right now. Or you can call your touch screen stereo if your smartphone’s battery is dead. Easy paying only with the power of your voice!
IoT technology and wearables make shopping and online payments impressively easy. Google voice assistant allows users to shop at the nearby store. Venmo allows peer-to-peer transfers. Alexa can help with paying off credit card bills. Amazon users can ask their assistant “Alexa, when is my bill due?”, how much bills cost and what’s the difference in amount with previous bills. Users can also set up notifications not miss the deadline for payment. They can trigger payments via Alexa just asking “Pay my electricity bill”. During the conference Money2020 Amazon announced that people whose utility relates to the Paymentus Instant Payment Network (700 billers) will soon be able to receive notifications and know when their bills are due with the help of Alexa assistant.
There is one more great voice assistant. Xcel energy developed Google action to make bill payment easier. Users of Google Assistant enabled devices can ask Google action to show monthly due dates and balance information. Need to pay bills? Just say “ Hey Google, pay my Xcel energy bill”. Xcel provides 3 million homes with electricity. Question of saving energy is always relevant and the company noticed the positive impact of using voice assistants in payments.
The matter is voice command solutions allow users stay aware of the amount of consumption with energy saving tips. E Source reports 60% of people said that they were interested in a utility app which uses voice activated skills. 44% of people reported that time spent with smart speakers replaced time spent with radio and 35% reduced their time spent with smartphones. 59% of surveyed users would encourage their friends to use voice assistant technology.
How do voice recognition technology change banks?
What for do people purchase autonomous voice assistants? One of the most frequent functions assistant perform for owners are:
- searching quick facts
- asking for directions
- product or service searches
- for business
Adding items to a shopping cart takes 26% and making purchases is at 25%. So, clearly people use solutions like google voice payment for banking purposes and online shopping. Development of AI and machine learning is expected to leverage the quality of voice recognition software. For financial industry voice payments bring new changes as the number of phone calls to the banks reduces, people visit branches less often – everybody tends to pay bills online. Some statistics say that there would be no need to hire people for the position of bank assistant as their work will be totally replaced with robotic systems and data-over-voice technology solutions. Paying bills by voice increases the level of customer experience. Everything which is automated and allows you to solve issues on the go is excellent as it saves time and money. People adore things in some clicks, and already today they are able to reach any information or services just saying it to the device.
Tough security questions
Voice recognition methods use biometrics data to identify who’s speaking with virtual assistants. The robotic assistants have gone through so much changes and updating that you won’t be able to differentiate whether it’s a human or AI is talking to you. However there are a lot of privacy concerns around smart speakers. 33% of U.S. surveyed adults said they had security concerns which restrain them from purchasing the devices.
Estimated that in January 2019 26% of people showed a strong concern about speaker’s privacy risk. The number jumped to 30% in January 2020. The reason is exposure to recorded conversations. All of the world’s biggest voice assistant providers Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook are listening to some utterances because machine learning won’t be efficient if there would be no improvements in conversations between humans and devices. However, some situations were real leakage of consumer secret information which caused many doubts and indicated privacy as key risk in voice assistant technology.
AI updates will facilitate the ability to understand accents, dialects, intonations and more. Fingertips is unique biometrics data which is an important secure measure. 48% of people have used biometrics to make payment. Security is a really big deal and new technologies always give way for hackers to invade personal accounts with faked biometric data.
That’s why violation of privacy is a serious problem, so the question is how banks are going to protect sensitive information when it is spoken especially in the public? According to Biometric update in 2019 brought the first victim of deepfake technology. Deepfake technology uses AI to counterfeit images, video and audio. Recently Amazon Alexa security bug allowed access to voice history which might cause hackers to attack and steal personal information. According to a Voice report by Microsoft and Bing, Google Assistant and Siri are used by 36% of people, and Amazon Alexa by 25%.
Voice recognition technology has all chances to become a boom in the next few years, but people are not intended to trust completely new technologies. Companies have to invent new security measures to make technology safe and efficient at the same time.
Credit: Data Science Central By: Mariana Muzyka
