Banking you Haven’t Experienced Before: Unexpected IoT Applications in Finance

From mobile payments to insurance and daily on-site purchases, IoT changes finance in many ways, and today, you will see it yourself. Armada Labs presents a digest of what’s been happening around these technologies lately, uncovering real-life use cases that impressed us so far.

At times, IoT resembles fintech with all its pervasiveness and omnipresence. While fintech is a part of our lives we seemingly can’t live without, IoT promises to catch up with it soon. Sometime in the future, we won’t even notice the moment the crucial change took place.

But what if these two powerful technologies meet? In fact, it happens already, and changes come to fintech at a growing pace. You haven’t noticed that? Then, it’s time to power you up with an insight! We’ve come up with several mind-blowing applications, showing how payments become simpler due to the Internet of Things. Remember that moment since soon, we will be talking about “before” and “after.”

Financial Space Bursts with the News

NCR Digital Banking Adopts Kasisto’s Chatbot Tools

NCR, one of the leading POS software providers, has recently announced its integration with the conversational AI solution from Kasisto, which includes a virtual banking assistant and a dedicated platform.

The novel solution should improve consumers’ interactions with banking services in a digital-first way, ensuring immediate access to those. In the meantime, Kasisto’s virtual assistant provides them with the latest financial insights on banking, accounts, payments, and other topics of interest.

Conversational interfaces reinvent the concept behind digital banking. Indeed, virtual assistants are intended to replace banking staff in daily operations at points-of-sale and on the go.

Google Home to Become “Voice Banking”

And here’s how banking can be changed from another angle.

Starling, the UK-based challenger bank, was the first to find a new application of Google Home, and that one was actually in banking. As a part of the experiment, they integrated Google Home’s API with the smart speaker, allowing users to ask the device about their current balance or even make payments, again, using only voice.

At this point, Starling consumers could check and manage their accounts through voice commands, which, in turn, introduced another yet debated concept: “voice banking.”

Bank of America, FitPay, and “Wearable Banking”

In addition to broader accessibility, digital banking is now also becoming “portable.” A few years ago, Bank of America collaborated with FitPay, a provider of contactless payment solutions, to bring its services to FitPay wearables.

You probably saw these tech-savvy millennials and Gen-Z folks paying for services in a few taps on their wristwatch. Indeed, contactless payments are evolving into a new form, where consumers can pay from their wearables at the NFC-connected points-of-sale and Bank of America’s ATMs.

Per the introduced FirtPay’s Digital Wallet Program, consumers could benefit from instant wireless payments that leverage FitPay’s secure payments technology. The technology itself encrypts cardholders’ data with a unique ID, ensuring the necessary security level.

Apple Pay and Google Pay are the “Wallets of Things”

Wearable banking gave birth to another curious phenomenon — “Wallets of Things.” Those are specialized apps on wearables that enable contactless payments and provide real-time logs of expenses data. However, you may call it as you want; many used to refer to it as “mobile banking,” or “mobile wallets,” such as Google Pay and Apple Pay.

Besides payments and the benefits that we mentioned already, mobile wallets allow consumers to make purchases on the spot, using a barcode or fingerprint scan. For better security, mobile wallets are protected with a one-time password that is verified by the issuing bank upon each login.

Amazon Distributes its “Self-checkout” Solutions among Stores

Let’s distract from mobile payments and consider cases from other domains since there are more to surprise. For example, retail banking also gets a significant boost, and one of the “boosters” is Amazon.

Earlier this year, Amazon confirmed that it would be distributing its self-checkout technology among its retail partner network. In essence, Amazon’s technology, called “Just Walk Out” was claimed for sale.

So, what is “Just Walk Out,” exactly? It is a “smart store,” if you will. Shoppers walk around this store as they usually do, take what they need from shelves, and the items they pick are added to their virtual shopping carts. Similarly, they may change their mind about an item and put it back on the shelf, and it will be removed from the cart.

Finally, to pay for the goods, the shoppers only need to walk out of the store. No stops at the cashier point since there aren’t any; once they leave, they are charged for the purchases.

Well, how do you like it? No queuing after, no irritating time waste, and lower risk to catch COVID-19 when shopping around.

An Extra Mile for Insurtech: Metromile Partners with Ford

An auto insurer Metromile has recently announced that it teams up with Ford to grant Ford drivers a personalized car insurance experience.

Metromile is a digital solution that pairs IoT sensors and AI to provide consumers with real-time data on available insurance options and their prices based on the driver’s current mileage. Indeed, the insurer counts the miles driven from the driver’s odometer and charges them for that distance.

Finally, the opacity in auto insurance can be cleared, with consumers paying not a penny beyond the appropriate cost of insurance.

“Self-service” ATMs with Diebold Nixdorf’s “ATM as a Service”

“ATM as a Service” is a ground-breaking multi-channel solution from Diebold Nixdorf, a world-known security tool provider serving the financial domain. The solution covers physical ATMs, AI-based software, financing services, and more.

As a part of the agreement with the Australian bank99, the provider is obliged to set up around 500 “smart” ATMs across 300 bank branches. Soon, the bank staff will run ATM operations more productively and securely thanks to AI-powered software that collects and processes business insights in real-time and provides relevant recommendations on how they can change operations at the customer level.

Here’s where machine learning comes on the stage; it “trains” the system on processed transactions, including those declined by ATMs, the duration of each transaction’s processing, and the rate of serving consecutive consumers.

The system is also expected to measure how much time each age group spends on the ATM screen, how much traffic the ATM is handling at the moment, and the number of declined cards. With these invaluable insights collected, Diebold Nixdorf’s solution may become a real help for banks seeking to fine-tune consumer’s experience with ATMs.

The Future Doesn’t Wait; it is Here

We collected these use cases to show you that IoT applications in finance aren’t confined by payments only; instead, it gradually enters other sectors as well. Shopping, car insurance, at-home experience — IoT transforms our life, though it’s not yet obvious to us. However, soon, we will feel it, and find ourselves in the day where we won’t be able to imagine our payments without connected smart things.