AI Technologies for Corporate Payments
As the financial sector makes room for AI-based services, these technologies are reshaping almost all banking activities. The famous US investment bank JPMorgan now applies Artificial Intelligence to BtoB payments by way of anticipating corporate customers’ needs: a world first.
JPMorgan would be testing an AI-powered bot for managing cash flows and international corporate payments. This service has been crafted in partnership with NY-based start-up Kasisto, which provides a conversational AI platform for designing corporate smart assistants.
JPMorgan’s chatbot has been enhanced with real-time Machine Learning technology to deal with complex tasks and better plan later payments. This American bank expects this chatbot to suggest that users should contact specific customer companies when payments are running late, or that they opt for foreign exchange ACH payments, if and when needed.
A pilot phase will start in the coming days, with a few dozen users. Human support will be added in case the program fails. No indication has been disclosed as to the cost of this project but JPMorgan specified that 40% of their annual technology budget is assigned to R&D.
Comments – AI for smarter payment automation
JPMorgan already included AI technologies for their trading activities when they introduced their LOXM robot. This focus on automation goes on to considering corporate cash management issues. This specific segment generated roughly $7.6 billion in revenue for 2017, and could increase by 7% each year until 2025.
This new tool should help JPMorgan maintain its competitive edge as they have to face serious rivals, including Citigroup. Nevertheless, other banking institutions have also started to consider this issue/segment: Wells Fargo and Bank of America, for instance, would be developing AI-based virtual assistants for their corporate customers, too. Unlike conversational agents for individual customers, these tools bring about various development challenges for AI specialists, since companies’ account management processes are particularly complex.