Mastercard Makes Commerce More Conversational with Launch of Chatbots for Banks and Merchants

NEW YORK & LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today at Money 20/20, Mastercard announced its plans to launch artificial intelligence (AI) bots that allow consumers to transact, manage finances, and shop via messaging platforms. According to research firm Gartner, nearly $2 billion in online sales will be performed exclusively through mobile digital assistants by the end of 2016.1 Mastercard is developing bots for both its merchant and bank partners, which will use chat, messaging and natural language interfaces to communicate with consumers. With the Mastercard bots, partners can have a true dialogue with consumers and provide personalized service, seamless user experience and contextual offers and rewards. Mastercard KAI, the Mastercard bot for banks, will seamlessly extend Mastercard services to customers on messaging platforms and make financial information and decisions part of consumers' everyday lives. In this testing phase on Messenger, Mastercard is partnering with Kasisto, the company that created KAI Banking, the conversational artificial intelligence (AI) platform, to power branded virtual assistants and smart bots for financial services and is a current participant in the Mastercard Start Path Global program.