Citibank is planning to introduce a smart chatbot in Hong Kong by end of 2018 to enable its customers in the city to check their bank account balance and recent transactions using Facebook Messenger. The bank’s heads of digital banking Priscilla Ng said this will be the first Facebook Messenger-embedded chatbot to let customers access their own financial records and potentially conduct transactions in future. The bank will roll out the product worldwide later. Ng said Facebook is the No 1 priority for the bank, since it has around 5 million users in Hong Kong, around half of which are very active. The smart chatbot was developed as part of the bank’s ambitious global push into developing digital services for customers in the face of looming competition from virtual banks and innovative fintech start-ups.
