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Showing posts with label new Technologies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new Technologies. Show all posts

Friday, 20 October 2017

08:16

NEFCU launches Google Home banking app with Conversation.one

NEFCU launches Google Home banking app with Conversation.one

Nassau Educators Federal Credit Union (NEFCU), a 200,000-member institution in Long Island, US, has launched its Google Home Action and Google Assistant app.
The solution is based on the Conversation.one platform. It enables NEFCU’s customers “to check their share and loan balances, review recent transactions, locate branches and ATMs, connect to their contact centre, or get the most up-to-date loan rates by simply talking to their Google Home devices or their Google Assistant,” the tech provider says.
“By leveraging the Conversation.one platform, we become one of the first financial institutions in the US to launch online banking Alexa skills and Google Home Actions, making us an industry leader in this technology,” states Jojo Seva, CIO at NEFCU.
Last year, another US credit union, Baxter CU, signed for Symitar’s Financial Innovations Voice Experience (FIVE) – a solution that explores the possibilities that voice-based personal assistants such as Amazon’s Echo and Microsoft’s Cortana can bring to banking.
Conversation.one was founded in 2017 and is based in California. Its flagship product is “a build-once-deploy-everywhere platform for developing conversational apps”. It is a “no-coding, no-programming, intuitive, visual and user-friendly” platform that uses machine learning.
Source:Bankingtech


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Wednesday, 21 December 2016

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Sunday, 4 December 2016

20:47

Smart Box Insurance

Smart Box Insurance
Insurance companies are using car gadgets to compare insurance rates and provide cheap car insurance.
These gadgets are telematic data recorders that are installed in your car to collect information about your driving habits.
The recorder is about the size of a smart phone and insurance companies install it under your dashboard or hood to wireless transmit information.
The recorder doesn't damage your car or affect your warranty but it can lower your insurance.
The information collected (telematics) allows an insurance company to monitor your driving behavior.
This data includes what distances and directions you travel, where and when you drive, what type of roads you travel, how fast or slow you drive, how you brake, how you corner or change lanes.
It's like having an insurance agent sitting beside you while driving.
This isn't good if you don't want to share your driving tendencies with anyone. If you like to roll through stop signs, speed, or follow too closely then these car gadgets aren't going to lower your insurance premiums.
But they could convince you to change your driving habits, make you more responsible, and help prevent getting yourself or someone else killed or injured.
Young drivers are statistically high-risk. If you're a young responsible driver you're unfortunately penalized just because of your age.
For example, figures indicate that young drivers are involved in 40% of all fatal accidents occurring late at night.
So if your a young driver, insurance companies are going to charge you a high premium regardless of whether you drive at night or not.
So these telematic car gadgets help to distinguish drivers from being statistically included into a group category.Cheap Car

Insurance
Although there are currently few insurance companies offering these car gadgets, they will become popular as insurance companies compete for clients.
In the United Kingdom, Co-operative Insurance offers telematic insurance. According to David Neave, a Director at Co-operative, young people are being priced out of owning a car because of the rising costs of insurance.
"To ensure we do not end up with an entire generation priced out of car ownership we are giving them a chance to prove themselves as responsible drivers, and dispel the assumption that all young drivers will drive badly and have accidents," says Neave.
In the United States, Exigen Insurance provides telematic car gadgets. Fazi Zand, the vice president of marketing and business development for Exigen says that competition for telematic-based insurance is heating up and insurance companies must provide this innovative service or risk losing their customers to competition.
Telematic insurance coverage varies depending on the policy. There is usually an initial premium payment. The recording device may also be included at no cost. It's removal may include an additional charge.
Your policy and telematics may limit information to only driving between 11 pm and 6 am with a penalty fee if you drive during that time period. There may be mileage rates added to your premium if you drive during rush hours or drive high-risk routes, exceed speed limits or have excessive hard braking.
Alternatively, if you drive fewer miles, don't speed, don't drive late at night and avoid rush hour traffic, you could get cash back , get a decrease in your monthly premium or receive a large discount upon renewal.
Compare Insurance Rates
These telematic car gadgets allow you to compare insurance rates in real-time based on how your driving.
On board dashboard displays allow you to view your information so you can see your rates increasing or decreasing based on your driving behavior. This allows you to calculate how your rates are affected by what you do with your car.
These car gadgets provide a statistical proven record of how you drive, which can lower your insurance each year. Other advantages include claims management and car theft recovery.
In the event that your involved in an accident the gadget could prove you were not responsible. If your car is stolen, the vehicle can be tracked and recovered.
These telematic car gadgets were designed to be driver oriented based upon individual driving habits rather than price oriented based upon group profiling.


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20:43

New Travel Insurance with Smartbox Technology

New Travel Insurance with Smartbox Technology
Insurance companies are implementing smartbox technology so good drivers can benefit from cheap insurance rates.
The smartbox, similar to a black box for airplanes, records details about how your car is driven, which can result in cheap car insurance for responsible drivers.
The device is connected to the electronics in your car and collects a wide criteria of information such as time, speed, braking, cornering, acceleration and location.
new electronic inventions The smartbox data is wireless transferred in real time to the insurance company and provides a profile of when, where and how you drive. This profile is then used to compare insurance rates and to reward low-risk driving behavior with cheap insurance rates.
Drivers are high-risk when they drive irresponsibly such as speeding, frequent lane changing, driving in high-risk locations or at high-risk times such as in heavy traffic or late at night.
These new electronic inventions are intended to replace the standard practice of categorizing drivers into group behavior to determine insurance coverage and premium payments.
For example, young drivers are more likely to drive fast, drive at night. and use a cell phone while driving. Statistically, young drivers are more likely to cause an accident so insurance companies charge them higher rates to cover the costs of accident claims.
So even if you're a young, responsible driver, you will pay high insurance rates because of group behavior.
This technology allows you to provide proof that your driving behavior doesn't fit the pattern of your demographic group.
All the information collected about your driving can be viewed online - including what you're doing well and what could be improved. Your insurance premium is then calculated according to your driving profile.

You may like reading - "SMARTBOX INSURANCE".

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Thursday, 17 November 2016

10:04

Lakshmi, country's first banking robot, makes debut in Chennai

Lakshmi, country's first banking robot, makes debut in Chennai
Endearing, interactive and superfast with data, India's first banking robot Lakshmi made her debut on Thursday in the city. Launched by the Kumbakonam-based City Union Bank, the artificial intelligence powered robot will be the first on-site bank helper.
Top private lender HDFC Bank, which is also experimenting with robots to answer customer queries, is testing its humanoid at its innovation lab. Lakshmi, which took more than six months to develop, can answer intelligently on more than 125 subjects.
Want to know your account balance? Interest rates on home loans? Deferred payments or possible charges to be incurred on fixed deposit closure? Lakshmi can answer it all. "Apart from answering generic questions, we have also programmed it to connect to the core banking solution. If a customer wants to know his bank account details or transaction history, the robot can flash the answer on its display," said N Kamakodi, MD and CEO, City Union Bank.
Sensitive financial information like account details are displayed discreetly on the robot's screen and not voiced. "Lakshmi only talks out loud on generic subjects. If you visited our branch with your girlfriend, she won't embarrass you by showing your low account balance," joked its CEO.
Lakshmi, who currently speaks in English, gestures, turns around and engages in a very life-like manner in conversations. Unlike most robots her speech is not formal, but more relaxed and casual. "Since its artificial intelligence, the robot is constantly learning from customers - the more interactions it has with customers the better it gets," said a bank executive.
And what if a question stumps Lakshmi? "She then asks you to get in touch with the branch manager. But at the back-end, we will be collecting all the questions she was unable to answer and equip her with better data sets, so she can service customers. Today she can give real time updates of foreign exchange movement, current interest rates at banks for different asset classes like personal, educational, two-wheeler and home loans, possible charges on withdrawals or deposits. But going forward, she might be able to more than that," said its assembler Vijay V Shah of Coimbatore-based Vishnu Engineering.
In the next few months, City Union will aim at programming the humanoid to greet customers in Tamil. "We are also looking at enabling it so that it can service visually challenged individuals. Worldwide very few banks employ robots at branches and we want to bring a whole new experience to India," said CEO Kamakodi.
Currently, the bank has readied only one version of Lakshmi and has plans for 25-30 robots deployed at key branches by the end of the year if Lakshmi proves a hit with customers. The bank was planning on Lakshmi's debut on Thursday at its T.Nagar branch. But given the rush due to the demonetization drive and customers thronging the branches for exchanging withdrawn notes, Lakshmi might go public only on Monday.

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Thursday, 13 October 2016

22:33

Walking The Payments Testing Tightrope

Walking The Payments Testing Tightrope
Testing payments is a necessary part of the business, yet a challenging one to address. Inadequate software testing can have dire consequences, but the increased complexity in payments testing has caused many institutions to overlook its importance. Iliad Solutions is looking at a new way to address this major payments challenge — by moving away from fragmented testing and ensuring success in an ever-changing environment.


Putting any type of payment system or solution out into the market without adequate testing may sound like an unrealistic scenario, but a surprising number of institutions fall short.

In the specialist area of payments testing, things have become increasingly more challenging. Ever-evolving standards, proprietary interfaces and formats, cryptography, the evolution of new messages and tokens and the constant external forces of crime and fraud all add immeasurable layers of complexity, which need to be managed and controlled. Add to this an increasing move towards Agile development, and it’s easy to see why testing payments is not quite as simple as it used to be.

Though it may be hard to keep up in the payments testing space, not keeping up can cost banks or payments processors big time.

“When financial institutions get things wrong, high-profile exposure in the press and social media damages corporate reputation and share prices,” Anthony Walton, CEO of Iliad Solutions, stated.

Unfortunately, for many of those institutions, payments testing continues to receive insufficient attention until it’s too late. The root of this mistake, Walton explained, lies in the whole process of testing payments, which is often facilitated by a maze of standalone simulators, in-house tools, stubs and ‘mocks’ (ad hoc pieces of code developed by the organization).

These are historic ways of working and are now, largely, out of date. Iliad has identified that organizations need to be able to develop new technology faster and to be first to market given the challenge posed by new, nimbler entrants and the increase in customer expectations.

Rising To The Payments Testing Challenge

According to Iliad’s research and analysis, there are very specific ways organizations can overcome the pain points of setting up a test plan and reducing the risk and cost of their projects.

The first is through virtualization. Virtualization delivers great benefits through the removal of resource constraints, the consolidation of skills and a testing approach that creates a standardized environment.

“Virtualization enables the simulation of a real-world environment, without the impossible costs of operating for testing purposes multiple mirror images set up end to end,” Iliad explained. “In the payments space, though, lacking support for the relevant standards, message flows and cryptography means that standard generic platforms can only hope to scratch the surface of what is possible.”

Being able to virtualize an environment is, in most cases, sufficient to produce greater efficiencies. Creating multiple virtual images of the system under test enables entire testing streams to be run in parallel.

“It is no longer sufficient to test elements of the payment process flow individually and in silos. The payments cycle incorporates all aspects of the payment process, from initiation all the way through to settlement and reconciliation, and the test environment should have the capacity and capability to test this as if in the real world,” Anthony explained.

Another thing to look at is the benefits of automation. To many people, the benefits of automation are obvious. Tests are consistent, can be run faster and run over and over again with fewer overheads. As more automated tests are added to the test environment, more can be run each time. Manual testing never entirely goes away, but efforts can now be focused on more rigorous and consistent tests.

Succeeding In The Age of Agile

For years, the creation and deployment of software has revolved around waterfall development patterns, where each element in the sequence largely depends upon the completion of the one before. But as computing power and the demands on development departments have increased over the years, organizations have evolved to using a more iterative, progressive approach to development.

However, in an Agile environment, where iterative processes focus on reducing the size of cycles and creating a fluid program through which software elements can be created rapidly, Iliad stated that testing can ensure success.

“The principles of Agile demand that testing is a core part of the whole process, not simply a random addition or something that merely checks a 
piece of code is working,” Walton explained. This requires more than just making sure software can work in the development environment. Proper testing means that the payments system can operate in a real deployment throughout the entire Agile process.

This means putting a well-executed test strategy in place, one that focuses on the collaborative and simultaneous learning about the software. In an environment that is designed to expose learning, share intelligence and support real-world deployments, continuous integration and testing automation are key.

“Service virtualization enables the end-to-end modeling of a complete environment for testing purposes by simulating the behavior of software components and removing dependencies and constraints on development and testing teams,” Walton said.

Source:Pymnts.com 

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Tuesday, 11 October 2016

08:06

Change the way you pay

Change the way you pay
Mohaiman Mostafa, a young entrepreneur has come up with pay365, a newest addition in the mobile wallet market of Bangladesh. He recently sat with Dhaka Tribune and talked about pay365 and his plan with it
Blending technology with innovative financial services is something that drags us from the time of barter to the time of bitcoin. In today’s world, over 95% money is virtual one and billions of transactions have been made through wire in every minute.
In a country like Bangladesh, people still rely on paper money but the idea of plastic money has started to find its footing, especially in the urban areas in the last one decade. People have also gotten accustomed with other payment options like bKash, Payza and other mobile wallet platforms. Banking on that, Mohaiman Mostafa, a young entrepreneur has come up with pay365, a newest addition in the mobile wallet market of Bangladesh. He recently sat with Dhaka Tribune and talked about pay365 and his plan with it.
Q: You had been working in successful US Company, what drove you back to Bangladesh?
Right after completing my graduation in Finance in 2013 from The Ohio State University, USA, I wanted to come back to Bangladesh and contribute something valuable for the country. Although it was a hard decision for me to come back because I was working for a fortune 100 company called Nationwide Insurance, I didn’t stop to reconsider. All I did was try to find ways to motivate myself to come back. I did not also want to do something that will benefit me only monetarily. Representing Bangladesh to the world and take Bangladesh to the next level was my primary goal.
Q: How did you come up with the idea of pay365?
While I was in Ohio, I started a fund raising campaign with Bangladesh Student Association at OSU and with that money, we built a school for underprivileged kids with Jaago foundation. These activities helped me network and find a mentoring partner Tanzim Shams with whom the idea of Pay 365 came up. The idea was simple: mobile wallet and payment by a QR code or NFC, an idea new to Bangladesh. But implementation seemed almost impossible. I even opened the company FyneTech in Columbus, Ohio to associate and educate myself on the IT industry. Finally after we had worked out a business plan and software architecture, I decided to come back in 2014 and build Pay 365 leaving behind a lot of opportunity, IT outsourcing projects, green card and all that.
Q: Can you give us a brief about your journey in implementing pay365?
During the planning stage I was aware that my childhood friend’s father Mahboob Zaman (former president of BASIS) owns an IT company. I called him once and he invited me for discussions. The whole journey started with DataSoft. The security aspect of Pay 365 was almost unknown to us. DataSoft is one of the leading IT companies in Bangladesh and has provided IT solutions to most of the banks in Bangladesh. We contacted Dutch Bangla Bank Limited (DBBL) and our project started end of 2014. There were a lot of struggles from then on. We had to work a lot on the tokenisation platform created by DBBL, build security portals by complying with VISA, mastercard and Bangladesh Bank which were major security requirement for a mobile wallet like Pay 365. In short we had to make it as it is in USA and similar to what Apple pay and Google Wallet is in USA.
The payment industry is evolving every day. First it was cards then mobile banking now payments have become easier on your smartphone.
Q: How do you rate Datasoft and Mahbub Zaman’s contribution in implementing pay365? 
I have to say that throughout the whole journey the only motivating factor was the trust and belief that Mahboob Zaman had on me and our team at DataSoft. We faced no obstacles regarding budget or contacts but as we were building this for the first time in Bangladesh, we spent a lot of time on research. Of course I initiated the idea and was in charge of the whole project, but it’s because of Mahboob Zaman that we have built successfully the first mobile wallet in Bangladesh. This is because Mahboob Zaman believes in changing lifestyles and has contributed a lot for the IT industry of Bangladesh. He believes that Pay 365 will have a transformative effect on people’s lives in a developing country like Bangladesh by bringing easier, faster and safer payment method. Of course I had the support from my friends and family but his support for a start-up company and encouragement towards young entrepreneurship is indeed rare in Bangladesh.
Q: How does the app work?
Pay 365 has 3 parts Easy pay, more secure than your physical wallet, and Rewards. User will have to only tag their bank’s information during sign up ONCE. They can also save multiple bank accounts. They don’t have to carry their cards to cash with them anymore. DBBL securely saves the bank information and every time some pays they will need to have their money in their bank and they will go to their favorite store and pay. The payment process is simple you just have to go to the app; tap on pay, a QR Code will generate and just scan the phone. Not only that, we also have reward program where users will be getting rewards every time they use the pay system. The higher they go up in the membership level the more the rewards they will get.
Q: ‎Do you think pay365 will find its footing in Bangladesh?
It should because this is a concept that is successful in most developed countries in the world. Even in India they have Repay and Pay TM. We have more features and surprises coming up. The payment industry is evolving every day. First it was cards then mobile banking now payments have become easier on your smartphone. Smartphone penetrations are also growing in Bangladesh because of cheaper phones. Hence we have to go digital now. We have Dutch Bangla Bank as an acquiring bank now and we are planning to bring other banks on board soon. We are going live in the month of September and user can then use this app in most retail outlets in Dhanmondi , Gulshan and Banani.

Q: What are the obstacles that you think pay355 will face?
Changing people’s spending behaviours and habits can be an obstacle because people first need to understand that smartphones are much safer than your physical wallet. It’s even safer than your card and cash. It’s also important to teach people how to use the app. The challenge will be in conversion marketing and I hope we succeed on that. I also think country’s economic stability is also an important factor because we depend on businesses like e- commerce, retail outlets like coffee shops and restaurants, universities, departmental stores where people will actually go and spend. It’s important that businesses grow and the merchants can use this app as a tool to increase their business growth. Bringing all merchants under one platform can also be an obstacle because pay 365 also facilities merchants to make their retail marketing strategy more efficient, find the best fit and track the demographics and lifestyle, and make the best use of data analytics. Not all merchants are ready to understand and accept this concept in Bangladesh yet.

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Monday, 6 June 2016

16:08

Here’s how Facebook Messenger will change banking

Here’s how Facebook Messenger will change banking

The Facebook Messenger platform opens many doors for easier, better digital interactions by enabling businesses to embed codes in chat conversations. Businesses can now obtain user messages, translate them into action requests, and send back automatically generated or manually-typed-by-human responses to the users. This is a faster, simpler, and richer experience than mobile app interactions, which require users to navigate through a mobile app, click on different links, load new pages, and wait for confirmation.

The new Messenger platform will affect the banking industry significantly because most banking services are tasks that can be automated, and instructions can be provided in simple human language (e.g. “pay my Internet bill”).

Today, if I want to send money to someone, I must complete the following tasks:
  1. Open my banking app
  2. Login to my account
  3. Wait for authentication
  4. Navigate to Send Money
  5. Enter payee information, my account, and amount
  6. Submit request
  7. Confirm order
  8. Receive confirmation

There are usually a few seconds of wait time between each of these steps as new pages are loaded and I navigate to the right buttons in order to interact with the app.

With Facebook Messenger, I can just type “Send $200 to Jack Nielson” in a message to my bank. By looking at my list of payees, my bank will know who Jack Nielson is (if it doesn’t know, it can ask for more information) and which account the money is coming from (if it can’t decide, it can ask again). Of course, some technologies must be built to make sure that the correct action is taken upon receiving a user’s message, but such programming challenges will easily be overcome over time.

Chat bot applications for banking
Thanks to mobile banking and online banking, visiting a branch is no longer necessary for day-to-day banking. In fact, many digital banking startups feel there is no need for a branch-based business model and run their whole business on the web and mobile. Chat bots will help banks automate tasks further by making it seamless for the users to submit their inquiries.

Chat bots are also a great tool for the banks to simplify their digital interfaces, while being easier to maintain than an app. To support a new Messenger command (e.g. “what’s my credit card balance?”), there is no need for an app to be developed and published in the App Store. All the bank has to do is to write code that translates the message to a certain set of actions in the back end. Thanks to new solutions such as Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence and Microsoft Bot Platform, turning a message into a request is simple.

Here are some of the immediate applications of chat bots for banking.

Alerts: Chat bots are great tools for delivering alerts to users’ accounts. You can get a quick sense of the experience by subscribing to CNN’s Messenger bot, a great alert tool that sends a summary of news items to subscribers every day. Banks can leverage the alerts capability to enable features such as “send daily account summary” or “low balance alert” for users.

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Sunday, 27 December 2015

09:40

How technology will transform banking in 2016: Blockchain, digital challengers and IoT

How technology will transform banking in 2016: Blockchain, digital challengers and IoT

But the competitive landscape has intensified as they continue to fight on a number of fronts, and the wave of fintech startups, digital challengers and tech giants present a threat that is unlikely to go away soon.

At the same time, a wave of innovation in the sector offers a number of opportunities for those that are able to move quickly. Blockchain has certainly been the clearest example this year.

So what will set the banking technology agenda in 2016?

Banks will come under increased pressure from tech giants

It is no secret that a major concern for the big banks is having their lunch eaten by the likes of Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon. And we can expect these internet behemoths to build on their consumer relationships and make further inroads into payments next year.

Apple launched its Apple Pay mobile payments service this year, and others such as Samsung are set to move into the market with similar offerings too. While Barclays has its own wallet, Pingit, it will be interesting to see if other banks attempt to stake a claim in this market too, or leave it to the big tech firms.

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Sunday, 9 August 2015

15:51

A Retail Twist on Bank Design

A Retail Twist on Bank Design

In today’s world of ever-changing technology, banking has evolved to include exciting new mobile and online technologies. Many bank transactions occur without the customer ever stepping foot into a physical branch. However, when customers do visit their local branch, it’s for a specific reason and they want a great experience. Banks are turning to design-build professionals to guide them in the design of their new main office or branch facilities and remodels. These professionals consider the bank’s business model, philosophies and desired brand experience, translating them into functional spaces that are not only unique and attractive, but more importantly, are based on the bank’s relationship style and purpose.


As trends for the banking industry have grown to integrate elements of retail environments, expertise from a knowledgeable retail design-builder is invaluable. One of these is Redmond, whose successful history of more than 700 completed financial projects and hundreds of retail projects include key national retailers such as Walgreens, Starbucks and Panera Bread. Redmond’s bank designs consider the branch’s operations and business strategies while bringing in top concepts from cutting-edge retail environments.

Creating New Banking Environments

As new bank construction and branch remodels trend toward a “retail environment” model, the experience for a bank customer starts at the branch door. Commonly used in retail settings, an associate greets the customer upon entrance and guides them through their visit, providing individualized attention from versatile bank employees who are trained across a multitude of bank products and services, ultimately creating an experience that simply cannot be replicated online.

Banks have traditionally incorporated standard brand elements such as logos, signage and graphics to maximize corporate branding. The newest trends include the development of architectural brand solutions that apply not only to the structure of the building, but also create a sensory-enhanced environment with interior design elements such as lighting, furniture selection, subtle in-ventilation scenting, sound masking systems and modern marketing techniques featuring brand reinforcement on interactive digital displays. Unique features exclusive to individual branches such as in-house art galleries or showrooms that flow organically through the branch provide a memorable “value-added” experience for the customer.

For many years, banks have traditionally offered conveniences including refreshments, fresh coffee and cozy fireplaces. Redmond has seen in many of its retail projects, and recommends to its bank clients to add modern “creature comforts” – multi-media screens, wireless internet, and kid-friendly spaces including educational interactive video gaming systems, centered around comfortable, multi-zonal seating areas with conveniently integrated outlets for portable technology. These make wait times much more enjoyable and informative for all customers.

Maximizing Technology in the Bank Design
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