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Jim Cramer sits down with the head of Bank of America's digital banking unit to get an inside look into where one of the largest banks in the country sees mobile banking headed.
1.4 billion login / Bank of America
The rise of digital peer-to-peer payment services in the banking world is paving the way to a new, cashless reality, Bank of America's Head of Digital Banking, Michelle Moore, told CNBC.
"We would like to get cash out of the system," Moore said in an interview with "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer. "It needs to be about security [and] ease."
Bank of America is a leader in mobile and online banking, with 33 million digital customers including over 21 million mobile banking app users.
Moore told Cramer that Bank of America saw 1.4 billion mobile logins just in the first quarter, which amounts to about 100 million logins a week.
"The secret is understanding what our customers want," Moore said. "We listen to them and we give them what they want, not what we want."
With 16 million U.S. households now using some type of voice-activated device, Moore's department has turned its focus to voice, developing its own artificial-intelligence-enabled assistant called Erica.
"We have 65 million customers," Moore said. "How do we help them live their daily lives, give them information about bills [that] are coming due or how to better improve your FICO score?"
A play on its namesake — the last five letters of Bank of America — Erica was rolled out in 2016. Today, the assistant can interact via voice and text message to help customers with specific financial needs, Moore said.
Creating one large, easy-to-use payment ecosystem seems to be item one on Moore's agenda. While she maintained that "nothing can replace the human interaction" at a bank branch, she acknowledged that services like digital mortgage applications are becoming essential for Bank of America's changing customer base.
Bank of America has spent $1 billion on building out digital banking service like these in the last six years. The effort has resulted in products like the digital mortgage app, which takes roughly 20 minutes and cuts a process that once took months down to a matter of days.
"The world is moving to mobile," Moore told Cramer. "I have a fabulous group of technology partners, and together, we build everything that you see that comes out in the mobile app. My angle is all about the client experience. How easy is it to use? Big buttons, beautiful design. Is it so intuitive that anyone can use it?"
