Five emerging technologies will shape the future of financial services, Lee Wetherington, director of strategic insight at Jack Henry & Associates, told attendees at CU Direct’s Drive 18 Conference last week in Grapevine, Texas.

They are:

1. Machine learning

While you’ve changed the radio station or ordered items from Amazon using Alexa, Wetherington cautions credit unions about jumping into voice banking.

“People are funny about their money for a lot of reasons, but specifically about speaking about their money out loud,” he says.

Most chatbots aren’t ready for primetime yet, Wetherington says. Organizations using chatbots that don’t sound human run the risk of doing more damage than good.

Until voice banking is sufficiently high-quality, Wetherington suggests credit unions continue leveraging the people and services and that make their financial institutions unique.

“Have your cake and eat it too,” he says. “Don’t give up on what differentiates you from big banks and big tech.”

2. Platforms

Platforms are becoming the dominant model for the delivery of financial services, Wetherington says.

It’s a plug-and-play business model that allows multiple participants to connect to it, interact with each other, and create and exchange value.

Leaders view platforms as a threat, Wetherington says, because they platforms control the distribution, user interface, marketing, and data.

Amazon has already developed key platforms that insert the company into financial services, including Amazon Payments, Amazon Cash, Amazon Lending, and Reload.

“Amazon has no interest in being a bank,” Wetherington says. “But it must integrate financial services into its platform to compete against Ali Baba and other Chinese technologies.”

For credit unions, these platforms create issues with deposit displacement, in particular with peer-to-peer (P2P) payments.

According to the Federal Reserve, consumers store a substantial amount of money in apps rather than financial institutions. These apps include Venmo ($2 billion), Square ($2 billion), ApplePay ($1 billion), and Starbucks ($2 billion).

3. Digital personas

Most cyberattacks causing bank losses now target consumer accounts, Wetherington says. The solution lies in device fingerprinting, where specific devices are associated with particular members.

Eight-five percent of big financial institutions already use device fingerprinting, but few have linked those device fingerprints to a consumer’s identity to create a digital persona for authentication across all channels.

4. Sensor fusion

In the world of the Internet of Things, all of the “things” have sensors which detect many things, such as steps, weather, and heartbeat. Credit unions can collect all of that data and use it to make decisions about consumers, Wetherington says.

An example of sensor fusion? The Amazon Go Stores, says Wetherington, which leverage sensors, machine learning, and artificial intelligence when a customer walks in, picks the items they need, and walk out of the store without having to go through a checkout line.

Not only does sensor fusion mean there will be more payments made for lower amounts, it also means credit unions be able to offer instant loans with real-time funding and instant decisioning, instant onboarding with real-time verification, real-time fraud monitoring and control, and real-time analytics.

“We are going into the beginning of real-time payments,” Wetherington says. “That’s the beginning of the reinvention of everything.”

5. Emotion AI

Instead of the user interface, pay attention to the user experience, Wetherington says. This way you’ll measure consumers’ emotions experience when they interact with your credit union, not just the interface.

Providing a good user experience requires having a good user interface, Wetherington says. A positive user experience will increase both member engagement and the trust they place in you.