Axis Bank partners with Singapore fintech for AI-first platform

Earlier this week, Singapore-based fintech startup Active.ai has raised $3 million in funding from IDG Ventures India and Kalaari Capital. The company uses artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver virtual assistant banking services. Founded by Ravishankar, Shankar Narayanan, and Parikshit Paspulati, Active.ai has gained significant traction with banks across Asia, added revenue and built a team of experts in banking technology and AI.

Now, Axis Bank has entered into an agreement with the fintech startup to move from a ‘Mobile-first’ to ‘AI-first’ platform. As a part of this initiative, a chatbox will be launched where users can pay bills, transfer funds, manage credit card spends, shop via messaging platforms and more.

“We are enabling new digital technologies to make it easy and simpler for customers to engage with us. Users are moving to an unstructured form of engagement, we want to be where customers are. Active.ai will help us engage with our customers in a conversation in a personal and contextual manner in the digital space,” said Rajiv Anand, Executive Director (Retail Banking), Axis Bank said in a statement. “Repeat value of transactions, a large number of customers, and daily usage on these platforms make a compelling reason for the bank to be one of the early adopters of conversational banking in the BFSI space,” he added.

“A new era of personalised banking and commerce is emerging wherein customers can converse with brands and financial institutions in natural language through their preferred mode of communication. In the future, customers will just walk to micro branches with voice-enabled IoT devices to engage with the banks for services,” said Ravishankar, CEO and co-Founder Active.ai.