An AI banking assistant is software that answers a bank's customers in chat and on the phone, and can also do simple tasks itself, such as checking a balance, freezing a card or making a transfer. It is also called a banking chatbot or an AI agent for banking.
For instance, a homemaker in Bhubaneswar pays ₹3,000 by UPI for her son's coaching classes. The payment fails, but the money is debited from her account. She types in the bank's app: "Why did my payment fail?" The assistant reads her recent transactions from the core banking system. It finds the failed payment and tells her that the ₹3,000 will be credited back to her account automatically. She gets the answer in a minute, without calling anyone.
Older banking chatbots could only show a fixed list of answers. Newer assistants are built on large language models, the kind of AI that understands questions in ordinary language. So they can understand a question in Hindi or English, find the right information and take action. They are a kind of AI customer service agent.
Imagine instead that a customer says: "I lost my debit card." The assistant first checks that it is really the account holder, for example with an OTP. Then it freezes the card immediately, through the bank's systems. The customer does not have to wait for the call centre. Banks usually set limits on what the assistant may do on its own. For example, a large transfer may need extra confirmation from the customer.
The assistant works in several places. It works in a chat window inside the bank's app, and on WhatsApp through the WhatsApp Business API. On the phone, it uses voice bots, which listen and reply in speech. When the assistant cannot solve a problem, it hands the customer over to a person, through contact centre software.