Bank of America officially unveiled “Erica,” a virtual assistant bot at the fintech conference Money 2020 in Las Vegas yesterday.
The news was originally reported by CNBC.
The bot, which is powered by artificial intelligence, was created to help customers with personal spending habits and offer advice based on the information.
Erica will be available in plain text or by voice command on the Bank of America smartphone application.
As a “personal advocate,” Erica will track spending habits, notice if the user is spending more than usual on a product, present option to reduce debt and save money and send alerts if a user’s credit score has changed. Additionally, the bot will send users links and videos, in order to enhance their understanding of banking terms like FICO score.
“We’ve spent a lot of time investing in better money habits with education and information for customers,” said Michelle Moore, head of digital banking at Bank of America said to CNBC, “and so now we’re going to integrate everything, all the capabilities that we’ve created into one digital assistant that acts on behalf of our 45 million households.”
The bank and Facebook announced in April plans to launch a Bank of America Facebook Messenger bot. While a Messenger payments API beta was launched in September, the companies have yet to release a Bank of America Facebook Messenger bot.
