Barclays UK has certainly upped the ante through the fusion of payments with existing Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and biometric authentication resources. Launched with a late August update of Barclays mobile banking app, customers can now tell Apple’s mobile personal assistant Siri to “Pay Aunt Maude 150 pounds;” that is, as long as “Aunt Maude” is a registered payee associated with the account, and the iPhone in use supports TouchID.

This is not the long-prophesied “Tipping Point” for voice-enabled person-to-person (P2P) payments. However, it does represent the most “state-of-the-art” (if you consider that a relative term) implementation of a voice-first assistant to carry out payment instructions.

Incremental Progress Toward Intelligent Authentication

All signs indicate that voice payments are tracking the growth of mobile payments, in general, as part of an overall surge in digital payments. At base, to support “Payment by Siri” Barclay front-ended the existing electronic payments network with NLU and secure authentication. The technologies required for such a capability have been available for many years and many industry luminaries have already plowed the field and sown the seeds. For instance:

• PayPal made its first moves to launch voice-payments at the end of 2016;
• Financial giants such as USAA, Bank of America, RBC, Capital One, ANZ, Mastercard, VISA etc. are announcing, piloting and launching on a monthly basis
• Digital leaders such as Amazon, Google, Alibaba are driving next generation payment capabilities
• Smartphone leaders such as Apple, Samsung and O/S leader Android are enabling new entrants to disrupt traditional methods

Yet, adoption is still relatively sluggish. Security concerns among industry professionals, regulators and users are a key contributor to this, and rightly so; which is why Intelligent Authentication is deemed to be the magic ingredient to catapult mobile payments.

Still too Many Stops Along The Way to Intelligent Authentication (IAuth)

When it comes to Voice Payments, the ecosystem is still fragmented. This has a negative impact on the user experience, especially when the understanding of the instruction via NLU, as in the Barclays and PayPal deployments, from the Authentication such as Touch-ID, Facial, PIN, QR-code etc., makes the process cumbersome. Users who have become accustomed to seamless, delightful mobile experiences, have a right to be unimpressed. However this gap is closing fast, for example:

• On-device Voice Biometrics, spearheaded by the FIDO alliance, gives immediate access to billions of smartphones globally, without a specific reliance on a particular operating system such as Android, or authentication capability such as Apple TouchId
• ‘VoiceFirst’ meta-bots such as Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s iHome, Alibaba’s Tmall Genie’ are driving user comfort with voice-only interfaces; as well as payments such as American Express payment via Alexa
• Voice Assistants such as Bixby, Siri, Cortana and quantum improvements driven by AI are also driving user familiarity with screenless, Voice-first interfaces

While we are seeing advances in the fusion of NLU and Voice Biometrics, better integration of the voice-first resources is encouraged. It is crucial, from the beginning, to adopt a multi-layer approach to voice payments, leveraging device, location, behavioral and other factors to ensure that security is not compromised. Intelligent Authentication is the ability to provide a user with a seamless, frictionless and continuous experience where authentication is passively embedded into the payment process; and not a separate task.

Blending security and user experience for fully seamless voice-payments will yield immense benefits for first movers. Developers of digital and crypto currencies will also latch quickly onto the benefits of voice payments. Taking a balanced approach to usability and security; with realistic expectations of the technological and market readiness is the key to a fulfiling voice-payments journey.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Intelligent Authentication