Bank of America’s Mobile Banking Star Erica Makes Her Debut

Seems like everywhere you turn these days, there’s a new voice-activated artificial intelligence (AI) system looking to help users connect to various subjects. We’ve seen Siri and Alexa take the stage, and now Bank of America sent word our way about its own addition to the pool with Erica, who’s set to give Bank of America’s 25 million clients some extra firepower in the field.

Erica, an AI-driven virtual assistant, gives users an easy way to search prior transactions, from checks written to purchases on a debit card, just by asking. Erica can also provide insight on credit scores and offer advice on managing money through the Better Money Habits system. Erica can fill customers in on ATM locations, banking center locations, and can even set up meetings with the staff at those banking centers. Setting up payment schedules for bills and both locking and unlocking debit cards are also on Erica’s menu and, just to round it out, Erica can also tap into Zelle to make payments to individuals.

Erica is actually designed to learn over time, and get used to a customer’s routine. There are several functions set to come later to Erica’s purview, including such things as proactive notice of upcoming bills-which, theoretically, Erica will learn about by paying the old ones-as well as spotting ways to save money, catching unusual transactions, and show upcoming changes in subscriptions to better manage the ones that are in place.

When put on a mobile device, Erica is the kind of system that can effectively unlock banking and budgeting almost anywhere. Throw in the Zelle capability and it’s a safe bet it will be a welcome development at at least some of the farmers’ markets currently in play with summer coming on. Throw in all the predictive and monitoring capabilities and Erica might well be a real winner. Bank of America could use one of those; it may not be as bad off as, say, Wells Fargo is right now, but it could use a nice high-profile win.

Everything we’ve seen about Erica so far suggests that it could indeed be that winner. Hopefully, Erica users will agree, and take advantage of the wide range of options presented here.