Innovative iGaranti Mobile App Integrates Nuance Virtual Assistant Features to Make Banking as Easy as Speaking

Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) announced that Garanti Bank, one of the largest private banks in Turkey, is leveraging Nuance’s Nina, the intelligent virtual assistant, to bring a human-like conversational interface to its iGaranti mobile banking app. Garanti Bank joins other organizations around the globe that have chosen to reinvent their customer experience through the Nina virtual assistant, enabling more human conversations with customers through speech and natural language understanding (NLU).

Garanti Bank customers can now simply converse with the iGaranti virtual assistant using natural, conversational language to inquire about their account details, transfer funds , get exchange rates, buy/sell foreign currency and a host of other functions, instead of tapping their way through the app. For example, customers can say: “I need to send 500 Liras to Ali in my contact list today” then dictate a description for the money transfer. With iGaranti, customers can also find out more about nearby shopping or savings offers, moving beyond simple, conventional, transactional banking to contextual banking that anticipates user needs based on an awareness of their habits. The truly innovative iGaranti App was the #1 Free App in the iOS App Store when it was first introduced, and has continued to be a popular download since its launch.

“iGaranti has been designed with Millennial users in mind and includes breakthrough innovations” said Didem Dinçer Başer, Executive Vice President, Garanti Bank. “At Garanti Bank, we strongly believe in the importance of voice based services. iGaranti was the first banking project outside of the United States to utilize Nina Mobile from Nuance, and we are continually making efforts to improve the voice technology for future applications. We are getting closer to our goal of allowing a seamless end-to-end speech enabled experience and we will continue to make investments into voice based services for the upcoming years.”

“It’s thrilling to be on the forefront of this global shift in how companies are engaging with their customers,” said Robert Weideman, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Division, Nuance. “We’re seeing this to bear in mobile apps today through the proliferation of the virtual assistant, which not only improves the customer experience, but also helps organizations to contain costs and even drive sales. It’s really a new era in customer service, and companies like Garanti are on the cutting edge.”

“To perform a transaction on a mobile phone, such as a money transfer, customers need to tap the small screen many times to fill in the required input fields. Performing the same transaction just by talking makes life easier, and makes for a more convenient customer experience. We are proud of being the local service provider for Garanti Bank’s project in Turkey, delivering the most advanced technological experience, in cooperation with Nuance.” said Tarkan Ersubaşı, CEO, Speechouse, partner of Nuance in Turkey.

Nina leverages Nuance’s unparalleled technology leadership and expertise in voice, natural language understanding, conversational dialogue and advanced resolution techniques, to deliver a compelling, multi-channel, automated customer service experience for the consumer and the enterprise. Nina is available now directly from Nuance in 43 spoken and 13 text languages. For more information about Nina, and to see Nina in action, please go to www.nuance.com/go/nina