Soon Alexa, Google Assistant Will Help You in Blocking Debit Cards

Indian banks are soon going to adopt voice assistants to help you make basic service requests.

Voice-enabled banking services will soon be available to consumers in India.

(Photo: iStock)

Phone banking or speaking to a customer care executive can be a cumbersome experience. Just to get a card blocked urgently, it’ll take you 10 or even 15 minutes easily.

But with the change in Indian banking dynamics, looking more digital than ever, voice is likely to come to your rescue. Not only will you be able to check your bank balance, banks will also let you block debit or credit cards without needing to wait in a queue.

All this is happening because of company called Financial Software and Systems (FSS) which also specialises in setting up ATMs across the country. The voice-enabled system is likely to adopted by leading Indian banks by end of 2019.

According to latest regulations for digital banking from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), voice commerce is an intrinsic part of the future of doing transactions for consumers as well business.

The banks from here on will collaborate to set up the processes to make use of voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant. This feature will make sure all the customer care requests like; fund transfers, bill payments, card controls or even ordering for a cheque book can be done in quick time without any hassle.

This might sound scary to many of few, after all voice has its own concerns with respect to security but FSS has clarified those to us.

All financial transactions initiated are completely secure. FSS Voice Commerce supports out-of-band multi-factor authentication including one-time pass codes and biometrics.

FSS Statement

FSS will make sure banks adhere to the stipulated security measures to make the consumer feel safe while transacting via voice.

For this, they are using two-factor authentication process, which means, when you ask for a bill to be paid, the bank will send you a one time password (OTP) which needs to be fed to the voice assistant for added security.

ToneTag lets you pay money via sound frequency.(Photo: The Quint)

That’s not all, the your debit or credit card number will never be stored in fixed state. FSS and the banks will adopt the tokenisation method, which changes the sequence of your card number, every time the voice assistant is put to sleep and then switches on with your voice command.

All the customer will have to do is, log in to their Alexa account to raise the service request (block a card or check balance) which will land on the bank’s system, from where the action will be taken. For this to work, they will have to enable the skills of their respective bank, and make sure the features are already available.

The use case of voice commands is predominantly seen in closed spaces, and banks really could benefit from adopting this technology, as long as everyone is vary of its repercussions.

Voice is the latest ecosystem being tried out by Indian banks, where we’ve already seen sound and even clicking selfie seen as options to make mobile payment.