NCR teams with Maine FI to fine-tune Alexa's financial skills
On October 5, 2017, NRC Corp. announced its partnership with Maine-based Town & Country Federal Credit Union to create a new skill for Amazon Alexa-enabled devices that allows consumers to securely link and manage their personal bank account information through the device.
"[W]e are excited to be the first credit union and among the first banks in the country to introduce a skill for Alexa with bank account linking, and to help lead the way for others in the financial services industry to explore this new technology," Town & Country President and CEO David Libby said in the release.
"[W]e are continually investing in cutting-edge technology delivering experiences like conversational banking that transform banking experience," said Eli Rosner, NCR senior vice president and chief technology officer for software solutions. "We help our partner financial institutions redefine the consumer experience in financial services, thus driving improved engagement and advocacy." (link to article)
Introducing a new partnership;
As a component to my thesis study, I am proposing the following hypothetical partnership called GreenTime as an incentive aimed at slowing down the consumption of merchandise to decrease the environmental strain on the planet and it's resources.
There is an ever growing disconnection between money and time. It's easier to spend money as we earn it than to save money for annual income taxes or even worse, for the distant future goal of retirement. I am proposing the following nudge / carrot / incentive– a reminder at two critical stages of interaction; the INPUT and OUTPUT phase of ATM's.
INPUT STAGE- when depositing monies, the screen offers two main choices for allocating the funds– the Deposit Smart % option calculates your wages and displays the amount in terms of hours closer to retirement:
Adding 6% of this deposit means you can retire 12 hours earlier
OUTPUT STAGE- when withdrawing cash, a sticky note is adhered to the cash. To mitigate being overlooked, this message does not only appear on the transaction receipt, but appear at the focal point of the eye and hand.
I was recently introduced to the poet and critic Ezra Pound and his discourse on economics through the writings of Lewis Hyde in his book The Gift. “Pound felt that as long as we are going to use money as a symbol of value, should be different kinds of money to stand for different kinds of value: clover money for clover and salt money for basalt.”
Hyde later discusses the rise of market value as THE form of value and how cash exchanges are rooted in logical and concrete thinking however, the image of cash exchange especially with credit, has been lost to layers of abstraction. We don’t speak clearly about money for what it is, “a ticket” rather we associate it with more symbolic exchange. And that's what I am trying to do right here- reconnect the symbolism of time and money.