Discovery Bank's AI prepares payment details from invoices automatically

[Jan]

Discovery Bank changes the game

Discovery Bank has launched new AI-powered features that help automate the tedious process of capturing banking information when paying new beneficiaries.

In a notice to customers on Tuesday, Discovery Bank introduced what it described as a completely new way to make payments through Discovery AI in its banking app.

 

[Sapphiron]

Hey, Discovery: "Pay R15000 to Michelle Ho, for basic direction"
Discovery: "Paying R50000 to hoe, for basic erection"

 

[SauRoNZA]

Shouldn’t need AI in the first place if the banks could all just agree on a standard.

Then I could be a simple QR code.

 

[Heisenborg]

Hey, Discovery: "Pay R15000 to Michelle Ho, for basic direction"
Discovery: "Paying R50000 to hoe, for basic erection"

Lame

These sorta use cases actually make sense.

We are building some agents to help an insurer work through things like hand written notes, system generated notes. Presents it to the human to verify and off you go.

AI sucks, also AI has its uses

 

[ebendl]

I must be getting old, because one of the things I find most annoying things is being forced to do banking through a 6.1 screen with my fingers in an app that locks out my password app for "security reasons".

Meanwhile I have a precision pointer, a full keyboard with tactile buttons, a powerful browser and a 30 inch screen available but the cool features isn't coming to it.

Mostly a rant at FNB, but Discovery adding this to their app only sounds similar to me?

 

[system32]

I must be getting old, because one of the things I find most annoying things is being forced to do banking through a 6.1 screen with my fingers in an app that locks out my password app for "security reasons".

Meanwhile I have a precision pointer, a full keyboard with tactile buttons, a powerful browser and a 30 inch screen available but the cool features isn't coming to it.

Mostly a rant at FNB, but Discovery adding this to their app only sounds similar to me?

+1
I have tired eyes.
The App fonts are so small on the app that my eyes bleed.
The App ignores Android font settings.
I prefer to use my 27" screen on my PC.
Why is a lot of functionality missing from the web app?

 

[ebendl]

Actually I really do like the ideas of using AI to do banking. It irks me incredibly having to look through an email / invoice / WhatsApp for
- the bank account (and then being forced to type in 7 - 11 digits in a continuous fashion because banking apps can't just ignore spaces - https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-eas...-of-three-numbers-than-others-longer-actually)
- what the guy prefers to be called vs the business and then the app cuts off most of the name
- the correct reference (invoice number? Account number? My name? My surname? My son's name? My son's name and surname and year and grade but oh then the reference is too long what now fine you guys asked for it your accounting can just handle it)
- finding out where to send out a proof of payment
- double-checking the amount a million times
- accepting the "risks" (looking at you FNB) of paying a third party and thus having to wait 30s on phone to open the FNB app and log in and then I have to acknowledge twice that I understand I'm paying a third party and then having scanning a QR code for some reason.

The idea of telling my banking 'agent' to pay the invoice sounds pretty good.

Security risks with AI are, of course, there - e.g. prompt injections or jailbreaking or an agent breaking its boundaries or of course simply the idea that I'm sharing my financial information with a third party - I doubt Discovery trained their own LLMs.

They may be using open weight models in a third party inference - heck they may even have their own AI cluster running - but unfortunately the article doesn't mention this. They may also just be calling the OpenAI / Anthropic / AWS Bedrock / Azure / Gemini APIs.

Would be nice to find out more about how they did it, @Jan.

 

[Smiggles]

I must be getting old, because one of the things I find most annoying things is being forced to do banking through a 6.1 screen with my fingers in an app that locks out my password app for "security reasons".

Meanwhile I have a precision pointer, a full keyboard with tactile buttons, a powerful browser and a 30 inch screen available but the cool features isn't coming to it.

Mostly a rant at FNB, but Discovery adding this to their app only sounds similar to me?

You can't access your phone via your PC? What year is it?

 

[ebendl]

You can't access your phone via your PC? What year is it?

I do this every time I bank. Still ends up in a very small window on my 30" monitor.

Doesn't help that my bank at some point "pushed" me to use the app rather than the website to "gain points".

 

[Sapphiron]

Lame

These sorta use cases actually make sense.

We are building some agents to help an insurer work through things like hand written notes, system generated notes. Presents it to the human to verify and off you go.

AI sucks, also AI has its uses

True, but I am sure, given you are working in the space, you have seen AI make some terrible mistakes.

The human review step you mentioned is very much recommended.

 

[Sapphiron]

accepting the "risks" (looking at you FNB) of paying a third party and thus having to wait 30s on phone to open the FNB app and log in and then I have to acknowledge twice that I understand I'm paying a third party and then having scanning a QR code for some reason.

Not to mention that when you open the app to authorise the payment, you first get presented by the "just for you" page just as the authorization page loads, then you have to scramble to find the notification again to get back to it.

 

[ebendl]

True, but I am sure, given you are working in the space, you have seen AI make some terrible mistakes.

The human review step you mentioned is very much recommended.

Agreed, if I ever do AI Banking I would definitely expect a human-review step before money gets moved (until we get to a point where AI doesn't make mistakes or can't be prompt-injected/jailbroken/go-roague that easily - if ever).

 

[SilverCode]

I must be getting old, because one of the things I find most annoying things is being forced to do banking through a 6.1 screen with my fingers in an app that locks out my password app for "security reasons".

Meanwhile I have a precision pointer, a full keyboard with tactile buttons, a powerful browser and a 30 inch screen available but the cool features isn't coming to it.

Mostly a rant at FNB, but Discovery adding this to their app only sounds similar to me?

I am seriously considering moving away from FNB because of how terrible their UX/UI is. Both their app and website are terrible no matter what you are trying to do.

I wanted to compare bank fees for various transactions.

For Capitec it was 2 very obvious clicks and I had the information I wanted in an easy to view table. I've never used or banked with Capitec.

For FNB I had to use Google to try and find what I wanted because they have so many confusing products and sections you can't organically navigate to the information if you don't already know where to go. Then you have to download a PDF that is so heavy it causes my PDF viewer to chug, and then you mentally need to parse various fonts, colours, tables, pictures etc just to find some simple pricing information. Want to check rates for a different account type? Find and download another PDF, except this one doesn't have any price listed for this type of transaction! But the web interface says I must look at the pricing guide to get the price for this transaction!?

Also, FNB, if I navigate from A -> B -> C in your app, then push the back button, I expect the result to be C -> B -> A. Not C -> D. Why does pressing back take me to a place I've never been before?

 

[ebendl]

I am seriously considering moving away from FNB because of how terrible their UX/UI is. Both their app and website are terrible no matter what you are trying to do.

I wanted to compare bank fees for various transactions.

For Capitec it was 2 very obvious clicks and I had the information I wanted in an easy to view table. I've never used or banked with Capitec.

For FNB I had to use Google to try and find what I wanted because they have so many confusing products and sections you can't organically navigate to the information if you don't already know where to go. Then you have to download a PDF that is so heavy it causes my PDF viewer to chug, and then you mentally need to parse various fonts, colours, tables, pictures etc just to find some simple pricing information. Want to check rates for a different account type? Find and download another PDF, except this one doesn't have any price listed for this type of transaction! But the web interface says I must look at the pricing guide to get the price for this transaction!?

Also, FNB, if I navigate from A -> B -> C in your app, then push the back button, I expect the result to be C -> B -> A. Not C -> D. Why does pressing back take me to a place I've never been before?

I'm considering moving to Investec simply because of API banking. Then I can code whatever I want. And automate however I want.

 

[SilverCode]

I'm considering moving to Investec simply because of API banking. Then I can code whatever I want. And automate however I want.

API banking sounds like the kind of thing the geek in me really wants, but for the life of me I can't think of a scenario where I would actually use it.