[Updated April 30] On April 23rd U.S. Bank, the 5th largest commercial bank in the United States, reported that it is piloting a branded version of Nuance Communications’ Nina(TM) Mobile to support a speech-enabled mobile virtual assistant. A branded version of Nina will enable customers who have been issued the U.S. Bank FlexPerks® Travel Rewards Visa Signature®  to view account balances, search transactions and make payments on their accounts by using “natural language” to provide instructions will in the FlexPerks mobile app.

U.S. Bank operates 3,080 banking offices in 25 states, as well as a network of  5,056 ATMs. It has been an early adopter of several advanced payment features, including trials of near field communications (NFC) in some trial cities. It was also one of the first North American banks to offer credit cards with the  Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip installed, enabling travelers to use their cards easily in EMV countries. The bank does not provide a count of its FlexPerks cardholders. In 2009, when Northwest Airlines and Delta Airlines merged, Suzanne Ziegler, a reporter for the Minneapolis The Star-Tribune claimed that they served an estimated 1 million to four million cardholders.

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Tags: mobile commerce, Nuance Communications, personal virtual assistants, U.S. Bank