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As robots take over banking transactions in Nigeria…

PASCAL OPARADA

As many banks in Nigeria race to make Artificial Intelligence (AI) a big part of their strategies, digital-only banks are giving them a run for their money. These digital banks are deploying the best fintech products to take on the traditional banks.

 While the traditional banks have been wary all along, it seems they are diving in headlong because savvy techies who are deploying bots to take over jobs meant for humans may soon replace them.

Soon, tellers and customer relations would be replaced by chatbots, pieces of software that can have a conversation with a person as banks seek to decongest their banking halls.

Enter UBA Leo

UBA’s Leo, introduced in 2018, uses a harvest of customers’ data gleaned from Facebook Messenger to interact with customers.

Interacting with Leo is a mix of experiences, as a test of the technology has shown. This is in contrast to Keystone Bank’s gender-neutral chatbot, which gets stuck at some point in the conversation.

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Customers in Nigeria are distrustful or rather cautious of allowing chatbots to relate with them. They still prefer the conventional and traditional method of walking in, face a customer assistant who they can look in the eye and intelligently engage and have them solve their problems.

Tech experts say there is nothing to worry about despite the nascent nature of the technology in Nigeria.

“The technology is quite new but it is going to have quick adoption in Nigeria if it is made as simple as possible,” says Chibuike Goodnews, a technology analyst and Co-founder, Dochase ADX.

According to him, the technology is targeted at the Millennials who spend so much time on their phones and desire quick feedback on their banking relationships.

In the next five years, most chatbot users would rely on the messaging app for commerce, technology analysts predict as Facebook spearheads the big data, an app that reveals human behaviour and interests.

“AI relies heavily on social data. And social data that is being released on social media is not enough to offer full banking services and there are certain things that you would ask and they would not be able to harvest on social data,” Goodnews said.

The French bank, Societe Generale, is developing chatbots that could answer questions about equity funds in its Romanian banking unit.

TransferWise, a money transfer startup released a chatbot that allows customers to send money to friends and family internationally via Facebook messenger.

Recently, Nigeria’s digital payment platform, OPay announced that they have got Nigeria’s Central Bank’s nod to operate international money transfer.

The Norwegian-owned browser company is making a foray into the money transfer business in Nigeria as diaspora remittances into the country hit millions of dollars.

OPay wants to leverage its versatile payment system in which it has ORide, OFood and other digital-based services to drive its international money transfer business.

“OPay is a one-stop mobile-based platform for payment, transportation, food & grocery delivery, and other important services in your everyday life. Millions of users in Nigeria rely on OPay every day to send and receive money, pay bills, obtain transportation and order food and groceries.

“OPay is focused on making opportunities accessible to everyone and delivering on the promise of financial inclusion in Africa today to safely connect people with the places, opportunities and experiences that they truly care about,” says Ndubuisi Ekekwe in a LinkedIn post.

 But it seems Chatbots in Nigeria are only limited to simple banking like account opening, account balance and simple inquiries.

Aside from the issue of simple banking, Goodnews believes that Chatbots should be able to both wow and inform users, which would keep them coming back and make them repeatedly use the bots.

“If those things are integrated, it should be able to attract and also wow them with some of those features.

“For example, somebody’s name is Jane and the bot should be able to say, ‘Hi Jane, your birthday is on this date and then say happy birthday and the person would be like wow, we don’t know you are doing this kind of thing”, Goodnews said.

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Dodgy with data

But it has been problematic because many of the customers do not use their real identities on social media.

“Identity issues have been a major problem in the adoption of AI. An example is the TrueCaller where people give different names.

“The flip side of it is that the banks can give users the opportunity to update their details with the right information and that information has to sync with what they have in their accounts or else there would still be a problem, ” Goodnews stated.

Security challenge

Part of the reason users are cautious is the potential threat of compromising their data. They want to be assured that their data are safe.

“Until when users are able to come clean and say this is my data, AI will still be a major problem in Nigeria and the fact that the data is being picked from the bank into social media kind of poses a risk.

“But they have to make users understand that it is social data they are releasing and not any security data they have in order to give users the confidence that AI can merge social and security data and not divulge the information,” Goodnews said.

The level of sophistication that has been put into AI is very big and it would take sometime before it becomes saturated.

But suffice it to say it is a right step in the right direction and they should just keep improving on it and with time they will get better. Other technologies started that way but they keep improving until they got to where they are today.

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