Technology brought about innovations in a large number of industries or sectors. The banking industry is no different. It experienced an ample amount of positive changes as well. Well for the workers, maybe not that much but for the consumers, banking is easier than ever before. Employees would not like this change because the banks will most probably not have a physical presence in the near future. 

Online banking is more popular than ever. Apart from that, technology influenced the banking industry in the following ways:

Online Banking

Online banking has made it so easy for you to carry out almost all the functions while you sit comfortably in your house. Before the introduction of online banking, banking did not exist in the virtual world. People always went to the town or a nearby branch of their banks to withdraw money, sort out their finances or transfer funds from one place to the other. They had to travel for everything related to the bank that they wished to do. In fact, when online banking was introduced, many people had reservations about it. You can label them as trust issues. But yeah, people were reluctant to carry out online transactions. However, now it is so common, that individuals cannot think of their lives without it. Ask this question from yourself. What would you do if you want to transfer money to your friend’s account? Would you rather visit a bank or visit your online account? The latter, most probably. It is that easy these days.

Fraud Detection

With the ease of banking came easy fraud detection. Before the introduction of technology in the banking industry, the detection of fraud used to depend on man and machines both. There used to be a whole tedious process where the employees along with the machines would track evidence regarding the fraud. Now it is easier than before to identify a fraudulent transaction or activity. All thanks to AI. It is progressing at a faster pace than anyone would imagine. In fact, it is progressing beyond the capacity of the people designing it. To an extent that AI is now able to detect fraud. The machine is capable of tracking the whole history of the victim. It will then detect the fraud based on the previous patterns of transactions etc. The machines do it as a much faster pace than humans. Hence, making it easy to punish the criminal.

Biometric Security

Biometric security is a blessing to the banking industry. Although the criminal minds find ways to cheat these systems as well. But a face scan or a fingerprint scan offers you more security than mere signatures. In fact, no one now prefers a manual process of identification in banks. A customer is more comfortable with taking a selfie and posting it for use as his ID credentials, according to some researches. And banks that do not offer features like biometric security are more likely to suffer. As people would not prefer them. However, the banks also need to be aware of the security risks that can come as part of the biometric security system. A recent example of tricking a biometric system includes BBC’s attempt to fool HSBC’s voice system. To their surprise, the system was not sensitive enough to distinguish one twin’s voice from the other. The bank then agreed to take measures to improve the sensitivity of its system.

Voice Assistants

Banks are now making use of voice assistants as well to guide you through or answer any queries that you may have. Just like Amazon’s Alexa, the voice assistant also has the ability to respond to what you say. In fact, they are so good that you won’t be able to distinguish an AI robot from a real human being. Do not underestimate the voice assistants’ capabilities, as they will leave you shocked. Some banks are even training the voice assistants to narrate to you your previous day’s transactions.

However, banks are not the only places that are making use of such voice assistants. If you happen buy lederhosen, for example, you might not have noticed, but many times the voice assistants answer you. So, it is becoming the norm now. Technology is bringing about positive changes in almost all industries. Lucky to be alive in this dynamic era.