India-based ICICI Bank has launched voice banking services by integrating its artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbot iPal with popular voice assistant apps Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

The move from the Indian private banking group enables its retail banking customers to carry out a range of banking services through just a simple voice command.

ICICI Bank said that the new service gives yet another way for customers to connect with their bank from home at a time when they are complying with the nationwide lockdown in India due to the coronavirus outbreak.

To avail the ICICI voice banking service, the bank customers have to download the Alexa / Google Assistant and connect their ICICI Bank account via a secure two-factor authentication process. The user can then speak out their query to Alexa or Google Assistant enabled devices, through which they get to know their savings account balance and credit card details, including the due date, due amount and also their last five transactions.

As an example, the customer can ask “Alexa, what is my account balance?”, following which, the ICICI Bank sends the information privately and securely through an SMS to the customer’s registered mobile number with the bank.

Furthermore, the ICICI Bank customers can ask queries pertaining to the bank’s products and services, which ‘iPal’ will read out using the Alexa or Google Assistant enabled devices.

The launch of the ICICI voice banking service follows the bank’s other digital initiatives introduced by it in the form of the chat-based banking services on WhatsApp and ‘ICICIStack’, a set of digital banking and APIs for ensuring uninterrupted banking experience to both retail and business customers.

Commenting on the new ICICI voice banking service, Anup Bagchi – Executive Director of ICICI Bank, said: “It has always been our endeavour to offer improved digital convenience to our customers. Recently, we had rolled out ‘ICICIStack’, the most comprehensive digital platform in the country by a bank, and Whatsapp banking to facilitate crores of customers to continue all their banking, digitally and from a remote location, without visiting a bank branch.

“Now, we have introduced voice banking on two of the most popular voice assistants in the world. Our retail customers can execute a host of their banking requirements from their home securely and 24×7, without visiting a branch. With the growing comfort of customers in using digital assistants like Alexa / Google Assistant in every-day life, we believe that this would add immense convenience to our customers, as it allows them to get speedy and personalised banking experience whenever they need it.”

  Anup  Bagchi, artificial intelligence, Banking industry news, Coronavirus, ICICI Bank