It seems yet another financial institution is jumping on the bandwagon using the power of Facebook Messenger to help their clients take care of business. This time, it’s CIBC, who today unveiled Remi, a digital personal assistant that leverages the social media giant’s technology. Remi helps people track foreign exchange rates (FX), keep track of FX fluctuations by the use of alerts, simplify the sending of CIBC Global Money Transfers and get info on CIBC products.
This means that when sign in to Messenger you can ask Remi what the current FX rates are. You can also ask it to keep an eye on those rates and when a particular one hits a certain level you’ve pre-selected, you get alerted via Messenger; then you can opt to automatically have those funds sent almost anywhere in the world.
“We are excited about the way Remi is making it easier to manage sending money abroad,” says Vineet Malhotra, MD and Head of Alternate Solutions Group & Retail Solutions Group, CIBC. “You’ll always know exactly how much money you’re sending and the exchange rate you’ll receive, all without upfront fees. By enhancing existing technologies and building new digital solutions, we continue to deliver modern convenient banking for our clients, how and when they want.”
CIBC launched Global Money Transfer a little over two years ago allowing their clients to send money to over 50 countries –fee free. They’ve recently added five more countries; Mexico, South Korea, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates and Singapore.
Friending Remi BetaBot
You can find Remi on Facebook under the name Remi BetaBot, your CIBC Global Money Transfer Advisor. While Remi is certainly personal and friendly, take note that your chat will be recorded as banks often do with your calls. The chat will also be accessible by CIBC but also stored by Facebook. So make sure under no circumstances divulge any personal info or account numbers in the chat box. If you do decide to go through with your transfer, you will be redirected to an actual CIBC log in.
To start off, Remi will speak English and French but he is expected to pick up other languages in the next few months.
Images courtesy CIBC.
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Greg Gazin is the Real Canadian Gadget Guy, Columnist, Speaker, Podcaster & Author.
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