Working in Silicon Valley alongside Information Services International – Dentsu and the Nomura Research Institute, the bank conducted experiments for financial communication services with Facebook’s bot and Amazon’s Echo platform.
The tests come in the light of increasingly more retail banks looking to chat interfaces and voice recognition-based authentication to reduce friction in consumer mobile and online banking.
Mizuho worked with Facebook’s bot platform to develop a new messenger prototype that could guide customers visiting its website through new account opening procedures.
It also worked with Amazon Echo, which is not currently available in Japan, to allow customers to confirm the balance of an account through voice command. According to several media outlets, Mizuho says it will launch this service to Japanese bank-account holders in the US at a later date.
For the trial, the bank also worked alongside AppSocially, a US-based conversational user interfaces (CUI) developer, early-stage VC 500 Startups and WiL, a VC firm promoting collaboration between startups and large corporates.
The latest move from the group include a partnership with Ripple for the use of distributed ledger technology in cross-currency settlement.
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