Entrepreneurs who bank with Banca Transilvania can get information about their company accounts from the Raul chatbot including on WhatsApp, in addition to Facebook Messenger or Skype, as before. Details such as IBANs, account balance, cheques and promissory notes are available instantly, 24/7, on your phone.

As with other projects announced by the bank in March and April this year, BT prioritised this launch to help customers do #bankingfromhome — this time via one of the most familiar apps on their phones, WhatsApp. Through the chatbot, the bank and its customers meet online, where they already are, and between messages to friends or family, they can write to Raul as well.

Raul is Romania’s first chatbot for entrepreneurs, launched in 2018. It has now also become the first chatbot to deliver financial information via WhatsApp, and for its development Banca Transilvania worked with Vonage and Druid. Vonage is a global leader in cloud business solutions, specialising in messaging, chat, social media, video and voice communications, while Druid is a Romanian company specialising in virtual assistants, with whom BT is already working on other digital projects.

To chat with Raul on WhatsApp, save the phone number 0757 080 006 in your contacts.

What information entrepreneurs can get from the chatbot Raul:

• current account and card balances, in RON and in foreign currency;
• the IBAN for the current account and for the card account, in RON and foreign currency;
• the loyalty points balance for credit cards;
• amounts due on credit cards and on loans;
• cheques and promissory notes for payment;
• account garnishments;
• about the NELIMITAT package in the BT network and extra options;
• exchange rates

Information security is provided by WhatsApp, through end-to-end encryption.

To date, Raul has provided entrepreneurs with almost 270,000 answers, mostly via Facebook. They have been most interested in information about account balances and amounts due on cards.

Banca Transilvania has five chatbots on the team, three of which are online assistants for customers: Raul, Livia — for retail customers — and Ino, which helps with information about payment deferrals.