Infosys Finacle Selects Niki.ai to Offer Chat Based Commerce to Banking Customers

BANGALORE:
Infosys Finacle, part of EdgeVerve Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Infosys (NYSE: INFY), today announced its partnership with Niki.ai, a FinTech start-up that offers chat based commerce solutions. With this partnership, Finacle solution suite will be available with Niki.ai’s chat-based virtual assistant – Niki. This offering will enable banks to offer its customers a virtual banking assistant for shopping products and services.
The joint solution from Finacle and Niki.ai will provide a smart-purchasing chatbot by leveraging natural language processing and machine learning to converse with customers and perform online transactions. The bot will comprehend natural speech text in the context of the customer and will deliver personalized suggestions. The solution will provide banks an opportunity to initiate two-way automated intelligent conversations with customers.
Niki.ai is one of the companies that was recognized in the recently concluded chapter of Finacle FinTech Connect, an initiative that builds on ongoing alliances and the Infosys Innovation Fund program to identify promising new FinTechs.
Highlights
 The joint solution will enable banking customers to initiate conversations on the bank’s online and mobile applications and complete transactions without leaving the chat interface
 The e-commerce services enabled include booking for movies, buses, taxis and hotels, as well as, paying utility and phone bills. As of now services from 25 merchants such as Uber, Ola, BookMyShow, redBus, Cleartrip, Housejoy etc. are pre-integrated with the chat bot
 The entire deployment can be completed in a very short span of time using an easy to plug-in Software Development Kit (SDK)
Sanat Rao, Chief Business Officer, Infosys Finacle, said “As AI technologies mature, they present an opportunity for banks to automate interactions and enhance customer experiences. This partnership will enable Finacle to provide a virtual assistant that banks can use to expand their commerce footprint through a large pre-integrated ecosystem. This will further help banks to enhance their revenues as well as improve customer stickiness.”
Sachin Jaiswal, CEO, Niki.ai, said “With our vision to empower every Indian to fulfill banking and commerce on mobile, we have been working on building simple, smart and secure conversational interfaces, powered by AI for over two years now. Our partnership with Finacle via FinTech Connect will give us a platform to impact the masses
through its existing clientele. Finacle's experience will help us innovate in banking and commerce products further.”
Daniel Latimore, Senior Vice President, Celent, said “Bot technology holds great promise for banks seeking to reduce expenses and provide a better customer experience. Working with technology partners that bring in an extended ecosystem of external organizations is one interesting way for banks looking to innovate beyond the mere provision of financial transactions.”