Equity Bank Introduces Chat Banking On Social Media

Equity Bank has introduced Equity Virtual Assistant (EVA) to improve customer experience and streamline banking processes.

The Bank’s chat banking platform presents banking transactions as virtual conversations on social media platforms including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram.

According to Equity the EVA chatbot extends digital banking and customer support services to existing and new customers and can simulate a conversation (or a chat) with a user.

Customers can now manage their accounts on EVA and engage with the virtual assistant to make transactions like buying airtime, sending money, buying goods and services, paying bills, viewing account balances, and getting a statement anytime anywhere within their social media platform of choice.

Equity Group Managing Director and CEO Dr. James Mwangi, “The launch of Equity Virtual Assistant, EVA, is in line with our journey to make our services and products available virtually and online. We are continually investing in technology and products that are designed to give our customers more freedom of choice, ease of access, convenience and control. Using Artificial Intelligence, EVA will be able to constantly evolve and learn from the interactions it has with customers to provide responses. We endeavor to deliver financial services to our customers wherever they are and at whatever time in a secure, convenient and flexible way,”

The bank said EVA Chatbot is inspired by its investment in advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics Process Automation and Advanced Analytics.

Equity’s investment in technology innovations saw the bank’s transactions on mobile, internet, and third-party channels rise to 97.1 per cent, in the first quarter of 2022, as compared to only 2.9 per cent of transactions happening in physical branches and ATM outlets over the same period last year.

According to 2020 data on Social Media User Trends from Global Web Index, Kenya has the highest percentage of monthly WhatsApp users compared to the rest of the world, with 97 per cent of the country’s internet users active on WhatsApp. Cumulatively, Kenya has about 11.75 million active social media users. This presents a unique opportunity for the Bank as it continues to develop innovative products to drive its digitization agenda on all customer touchpoints.