Linqto launches face-to-face mobile banking app

With live video tellers, a customer's mobile device becomes a neighborhood branch. Linqto, with early roots of providing streaming media technologies to Stanford University and the Obama for America campaign, specializes in streaming video conferencing and financial services applications.

Linqto Personal Banker enables direct video, audio and text communication between bank employees and customers. Customers receive face-to-face, personalized assistance with the convenience of online or mobile banking. Transactions are carried out with full support from local bank representatives, exactly as it would happen in a customer's physical presence at the branch. For participating banks, Linqto maximizes use of remote branches and valued bank employees who can now provide virtual assistance to customers of other busier branch locations.

"This is a paradigm shift that will change the way we bank," said Linqto CEO Bill Sarris. "For twenty years, digital banking has provided customers with greater remote access capabilities for conducting banking transactions. But relationship banking has suffered as customers have become disenfranchised."

Key features of Personal Banker:

• One-click access from a bank's consumer mobile app: A customer isn't required to download additional software, set up an account, or enter an access code.
• Easy remote transactions: Nearly anything that can be done at a physical branch can be done remotely via Personal Banker. For example, a bank's customer can deposit checks, transfer funds from one account to another, set up a new account, or get information about other bank products such as a loan.
• Seamless integration with existing bank technology infrastructure: Linqto Personal Banker, a so-called white label product that can be rebranded, embeds directly into a bank's consumer mobile app with minimal effort from software engineers. It also integrates seamlessly into a bank's website, not requiring elaborate changes to existing bank software or networking systems.
• Transfer sessions to any bank employee across all branches: A bank teller can answer a video call and then transfer the call to any other available banker, including other tellers, loan officers, and financial advisors. These transfers don't have to stay within a single branch. For example, a teller in San Francisco can transfer a customer to a loan officer in Idaho. This means distributing high-customer traffic to be served by personnel at low-traffic branches to make the bank more profitable and prevent branch closures.