Chat banking automation for digital payments in the Philippines

The Philippines is one of the fastest-growing countries in Southeast Asia with a population of 106 million, 50 million internet users, and 32 million smartphone owners. Yet, despite rapid growth in digital adoption, only 20 million have access to formal financial services. There remains a lack of access to affordable and convenient payment options that include historically-underserved consumers who are often left out of the digital economy.

GoodPay wants to address this problem and support the Philippines’ financial inclusion strategy of bringing 70% of the nation into banking and digitizing 50% of payments by 2023.

GoodPay knew they needed to provide a digital payment solution to consumers without a bank account or credit card in a way that is inclusive, affordable, and convenient. But there was also a challenge: 

How does a digital bank like GoodPay provide 24/7 customer and merchant support for local languages and messaging channels without the massive development cost?

To address this gap, GoodPay chose Proto to deploy Gab, its AI-enabled chatbot for the Tagalog, Cebuano, and Ilonggo languages. 

The Proto AICX platform for chatbots, live chat, and ticketing was integrated into GoodPay’s digital backbone for processing merchant registrations and consumer requests, including loan applications, account opening, and bill payment.

Gab was initially deployed via Facebook Messenger for GoodPay and its partner banks, such as the Rural Bank of Silay. Facebook is the overwhelmingly preferred messaging channel for financial services in the Philippines with 94% of internet users accessing it monthly, making it the easiest channel for merchants to engage consumers. 

To date, the chatbot has handled 49,850 chats with an average response time of 0.66s.

With this automation-first approach, Proto has helped GoodPay save on the cost of customer support, chat banking, and merchant registrations – and allowed staff to focus on other important aspects of development such as product features, marketing, and partner engagement. As a result, GoodPay is able to scale up without compromising on quality.

Proto is the leading generative AI platform for local customer experience. Powered by GPT and its own proprietary AI engine, Proto's AI Customer Experience (AICX) Platform automates transactions, tickets, bookings, and other high-volume interactions for local and mixed languages across text, voice and 20+ messaging channels. Proto is globally-recognized for its inclusive AICX solutions across the government, financial, health and transport industries.