Why the Future of Finance Will Be Conversational

Financial software has traditionally been organized around products and features. You open an application, choose the thing you want, fill in the required information and confirm the action. This works, but it assumes the user is willing to translate their intention into the structure of the software.

People do not naturally think that way.

They think, “I need to send money to my brother,” “Remind me to pay rent on Friday,” “How much did I spend this week?” or “Which customers still owe me money?” These are outcomes expressed in ordinary language.

Artificial intelligence makes it possible for financial systems to understand more of those intentions directly, which is why we believe the future of finance will become increasingly conversational.

Conversation can reduce the number of steps between the user and the outcome. Instead of navigating through several screens to schedule something, the user can describe the action. Instead of interpreting a complicated transaction history, they can ask a question and receive the relevant explanation.

This becomes far more powerful when finance is connected to commerce. A merchant does not think of a payment as an isolated entry inside a financial system. They think of it as the money for a particular order, invoice or customer. A conversational interface can become useful when it understands that context.

This is part of what we are building toward with Tia inside TRIBE. A business owner should increasingly be able to ask financial questions using the language they already use to think about the business. A customer should be able to express what they want done without studying the architecture of a payment application.

There is, however, a serious difference between conversational finance and conversational entertainment. If an AI misunderstands a question about a movie, very little happens. If it misunderstands who should receive money, the consequences are completely different.

This means conversational finance requires stronger systems underneath the interface. Confirmation, permissions, identity, transaction status, records and clear limits around what an AI can do automatically become extremely important.

The conversation may feel simple because the complexity has moved somewhere the user does not need to see it.

That is the opportunity.

For years, fintech improved the infrastructure underneath financial services while keeping the interface largely graphical. Artificial intelligence now gives us the possibility of improving the interface itself.

The future of finance may not always begin with asking the user which feature they want to open.

Sometimes it may simply begin with, “What do you need to do?”