Monzo Adds Voice Commands Via Siri In Update

Monzo announced on Friday (Sept. 30) that users can now send money to friends and family via their voice.

In a press release, Monzo said the new update, which was just released, integrates Siri on iOS 10 to make it even easier to send and receive money. According to the company, once users authorize Siri to access their Monzo data, there are multiple command users can use to send money to contacts already on Monzo.

Monzo’s new feature comes at a time when voice commands as a way to conduct banking functions is growing in popularity. Today, the incorporation of voice technology into daily activities runs the gamut from taking music requests on-demand, to ordering from Amazon, to typing your texts for you. And if the success Santander U.K. is finding in an early in-app voice pilot is any indication, you can likely expect your banking to be voice-enabled in the near future as well. When Santander U.K. recently launched a voice assistant in its student-geared mobile banking app, SmartBank, it marked the first bank in the U.K. to roll out a voice technology offering. In partnership with Nuance Communications, the same Massachusetts-based company behind the voice of Siri, the bank is piloting the technology in order to initially promote voice-activated functionality around spending tracking.

Just weeks removed from the launch, PYMNTS caught up with Ed Metzger, Santander U.K.’s head of innovation, technology and operations, to talk about initial impressions and what’s next for voice technology in banking. The response thus far? Phenomenal. While Metzger declined to divulge specific early results, he spoke about the general kind of usage Santander is seeing early on with the voice technology. “We’ve seen huge cases in this first release around card spend, and that’s when we see peaks around month’s end and on certain days of the week,” he said. Metzger said that positive response has affirmed the value of experimenting with strategic innovation within the banking realm.