Wow. AmEx, pushing the bot envelope!
"This will be rolling out later this summer and will include the ability to receive real-time notifications about purchases, other important information like Card benefits and services related to those purchases, via an Amex bot for Messenger. For example, if a Platinum Card® Member purchases an airline ticket to New York, just before their travels begin he or she would receive a purchase notification in Messenger and then may also receive helpful reminders about things like how to access airport lounges, get restaurant recommendations and more for the upcoming trip."
Very unexpected from AmEx. Would be nice to have these same notifications in their app via push.
+ obligatory upvote for than rainbowized AmEx thumbnail 🌈
@aley I get those now. I'm wondering if they will add in flight notifications etc
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@chrismessina@mscccc Agreed, I have worked on a number of projects with Amex directly. I can tell you first hand that they push the tech innovation envelope hard for such a large finance company.
Kudos, AmEx. I was recently commenting to a colleague that with all the hoopla about chatbots, there's been an glaring absence of true financial services capabilities translating into a bot experience. This an interesting step in that direction and I'm sure one that AmEx can learn a lot from.
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Real-time purchase notifications (usually via SMS) is widely used in Eastern Europe. And is, probably, the best way to protect yourself from credit card fraud and unauthorized charges. So, I think that's a great move by Amex.
However, I doubt that their recommendations will actually work. First of all, how do they know that the airline ticket is to New York? This information is not posted in the transaction details.
@amneziolog my guess is that it will be generalized. So, it won't necessarily give you information about trips to NY, but just overall travel, in general. Not too personalized, but at least they've got their foot in the door and can iteratively get better from there.
EDIT: just saw the video. It appears they DO somehow know about travel destinations! Could be a clever use of Facebook/email crawling?
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@alirtariq crawling email is another integration (at least gmail.com) they'll have to do. On Facebook you usually post your travel itinerary at the moment you're in the line for security check or waiting to board, so probably not.
Anyway, it's great news that banks are entering the game to be more "human".
@amneziolog my understanding is that airlines share information about your purchase with the credit card company that issued your card for fraud prevention purposes. I don't know this for sure, but it's something I've heard.
@chrismessina@amneziolog Yeah +1 on that - I think this is fairly recent, but there is additional meta data passed along to card carriers for fraud. Card carriers are even trying to encourage passing that data to them by giving discounts on transaction fees.
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@amneziolog Also SMS is more reliable than bots which is depended on data. SMS is depending on network and usually comes even when signal is very low. IMO
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Nice. FB Messenger continues its long march to replicate the sort of applications Tencent's WeChat has in China.
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