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‘Alexa, did my rent check clear?’: Inside U.S. Bank’s voice banking strategy

U.S. Bank has quietly rolled out an Alexa skill for banking customers with Amazon Echo devices.

The fifth-largest U.S. bank by assets follows just two others that have also enabled voice as a banking channel through Amazon’s digital assistant: Capital One, which debuted its skill in March 2016, and USAA, which followed this July.

“Voice is going to be a hugely important part of how customers interact with any company, not just banks, in the near future,” said Gareth Gaston, head of omnichannel banking at U.S. Bank. “It’s already starting. Alexa gives us an opportunity to learn more about how our customers are going to interact with this channel and develop it before it becomes something really significant.”

Gaston said the bank intends to create similar offerings through similar platforms like Google Home, but wouldn’t confirm whether its begun those discussions yet.

Customers can ask Alexa for their checking, savings or credit card account balances, ask her how much they owe on a bill and when, have her read back their transaction history and prompt her to pay their credit card bills.

“It’s a great way to talk to our customers and give them another way to bank,” Gaston said. “Alexa is almost not a channel, it’s just there. We’ve piloted voice banking for authentication and saw this as a natural extension of that.”

The move is part of a bigger innovation effort U.S. Bank has been pushing this year. It was one of the initial banks in the Zelle Network to make the P2P payments offering available to customers in June. In July it launched an digital mortgage application.

It’s also a testament to the growing notion among legacy financial firms that to stay relevant, they need to meet customers wherever they are whenever they’re there, even if that means letting customers interface with potential competitors like Amazon or smaller financial companies to keep their business.

Earlier this year Wells Fargo CEO discussed the importance of keeping customers on a long leash by letting them maintain relationships with other payments providers, “as long as they come back to Wells Fargo.” Chase has also acknowledged its customers “really want to use these [third-party] financial apps and they do use them a lot.”

“Of course one should be concerned about what any competitive play would be in your industry, but to me, Alexa is like an iPhone: it’s a vehicle for an experience,” Gaston said. “At the end of the day we think it’s important to offer services through the devices our customers like using so we embrace it and learn from it.”

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Inside the creation of USAA’s Alexa skill

USAA is jumping on the voice train.

The San Antonio bank on Wednesday began a 90-day pilot of an Alexa skill for Amazon devices that lets customers check balances, review spending history and get other account insights based on their transactions. If the pilot goes well, the bank could create a new channel for customers to access their financial data and view it in ways that will help them make financial decisions.

Don’t mistake the skill for advice, though, said Darrius Jones, assistant vp at USAA Labs, a division that lets the bank’s customers participate out and provide feedback on its latest innovations.

“It’s really to paint a proper picture of what’s going on with your finances,” he said. “Having sound financial security comes out of making sound decisions, and sound decisions are based on data.”

For example: “Alexa, can I spend $100 on a new phone?”

“You typically spend an average of $200 on electronics in a month.  So far this month you’ve spent $50.  This will leave you with a balance of $2,518.51.”

This approach fits with the industry’s move toward self-service through digital channels. For years, that took the form of transactions like depositing and withdrawing paper money. But now, customers are seeking control instead of (or in addition to) advice when it comes to spending and saving.

For many customers and industry observers, the recent crop of artificial intelligence-powered digital assistants and chatbots has been anticlimactic. It’s let people see their account balances but little more than that.

“We thought there was an opportunity for us to do something different from the Q&A response mechanism that you traditionally see,” Jones said. “You’ll start to see spending advice as more of a mechanism to make a decision than to get some help. We think conversationally is the best way to deliver it.”

USAA’s skill uses technology from Clinc, which uses natural language processing, machine learning and deep neural networks to understand and respond to people. While Capital One’s own technology is keyword driven with scripted commands, Clinc’s allows USAA customers to talk in normal human language, without using keywords.

Other financial firms like TD Ameritrade, Fidelity Investments and Amex offer Alexa skills. Capital One is the only other retail bank to have launched an Alexa skill, with similar capabilities as USAA’s, as well as the ability to pay bills.

USAA, however, isn’t letting people move money via the platform for now because of security concerns.

For the Alexa skill, as with other Labs innovations, USAA customers that opt in to updates receive a direct message from the bank that prompt them to visit USAA Labs online. USAA has gotten requests for Alexa skills in its feedback, Jones said.

But it was through the PYMNTS.com/Alexa Challenge, in which it won the “Easiest to Explain to Mom” designation a year ago that really got the bank interested in the conversational channel — and led to the invitation by Amazon to develop the pilot.

“It was an interesting opportunity to see what a new channel and interface style with a conversational assistant would potentially be with USAA,” Jones said.