NatWest and RBS employ 'virtual staff' to help customers

Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest customers will soon be assisted by a virtual staff member when they need help with their banking.

A virtual chatbot will soon be answering many customer queries at Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest.

To start with, the web-based service, known as Luvo, will answer simple customer queries such as how to order a replacement card or update your address.

However, the software is designed to learn over time so it can deal with our more complex queries in the future.

Luvo is designed using IBM Watson technology, that allows the virtual staff member to understand and learn from human interactions.

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Adapting to human emotion

According its developers, it can mimic human empathy and adapt its answers depending on whether you sound happy, angry or irritated.

Luvo will initially be equipped to answer around 10 questions but as its cognitive system learns and develops it will be expanded over time.

“Luvo frees advisers from spending time on simple, easily-addressed queries so they can help customers with more complex issues,” Jane Howard, head of personal banking at Royal Bank of Scotland, told the BBC.

The software has already been piloted on 1,200 RBS and NatWest staff and will start tackling customer queries in December.

At first only around 10% of RBS customers in Scotland will experience Luvo but it will be rolled out to the rest of the UK in time.

When Luvo picks up an enquiry the customer will be told they are talking to a computer programme and given the option to switch to a human.

“We will monitor customer feedback and, if we find that customers are getting frustrated, we will quickly look to address that,” says Howard.

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Coming soon: payment by selfie

In another sign of the changing way we manage our finances, MasterCard has revealed online shoppers will soon be able to verify their identity with a selfie.

If you want to buy something online rather than entering a password or pin you will simply be able to authorise the payment with a fingerprint scan or facial recognition.

Known as Identity Check Mobile it will mean that when online shopping on your smartphone you’ll get a pop-up prompting you to authorise the payment with a password, fingerprint scan or facial recognition.

If you opt for facial recognition you will need to hold up the phone’s camera to show your face and blink.

The blink is to prove it is really you and not someone simply holding up a photograph of you.

“We are relentlessly focused on making the online payment experience near frictionless, without making any compromises on safety and security,” says Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at MasterCard.

“This is a significant milestone in the evolution of payments.”

The service is already available in the US, Canada and the Netherlands and is now being rolled out in 12 countries across Europe including the UK.

However, MasterCard has yet to reveal which UK banks have signed up.