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The Elegant Future of Payments

Posted by Alison Arthur on 20 Feb 2018

Bill presentment and payments have undergone monumental changes over the past 15 years. Electronic billing has helped both businesses and consumers “go green”. Balances can be paid easily online through user accounts and one-time payment options, reducing the dependency on paper checks. Add to that the power of mobile devices to make payments anytime, anywhere. So, what’s next on the horizon for bill payments?

Alacriti’s CEO, Manish Gurukula, recently talked with PYMNTS.com’s Karen Webster to discuss how voice-activated user experience (UX) is the next big thing in bill payments.

In the midst of all these changes related to bill payments, chat-based interfaces – including those using voice activated commands – are emerging to streamline the bill payment process even further. Alacriti was at the forefront of this sea change, developing a chatbot named Ella that’s powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Customers communicate with Ella naturally, via Facebook Messenger, to perform common bill-related tasks like making account inquiries and paying balances.

But conversation is not limited to messaging platforms. Alacriti is looking ahead to the next generation of transactions powered by conversation on voice platforms like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. “As we were contemplating how to move our text-based Messenger chatbot capabilities to voice and Google [Home] and Alexa, we had to first answer a few key questions: Where does the user data reside, how is it handled [and] how is the flow from one endpoint to another managed?”, Gurukula says in the interview.

Learn how Alacriti is answering these questions by reading the full article. In it, Gurukula also discusses Alacriti’s solutions for both one-time and recurring payments, and how they protect the most sensitive of data. He goes on to examine the inherent potential of intelligent personal assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant to offer better, more elegant ways of interacting with consumers and streamlining bill payments.

READ THE ARTICLE. 

Alison Arthur Product and Content Marketing Manager Alison creates timely product marketing and thought leadership content that keeps Alacriti's community informed on the latest developments in billing and payments technology. With a background in payments and financial services, Alison specializes in composing content related to technology, security, compliance, and overall industry trends.