Microsoft Surface for Retail Banking – Closer Than You Think

Banks are facing economic pressure and must cut costs, but in order to remain competitive, they also have to plan for tomorrow, meeting the next-generation demands of increasingly sophisticated customers. To hear about the potential of one of the newest technologies, surface computing, Windows in Financial Services spoke with Marley Gray, Microsoft’s industry technology strategist for banking.

WFS: How does Microsoft Surface work?

Gray: Microsoft Surface is the first commercially available surface computing platform from Microsoft, providing effortless access to digital content through natural gestures, touch, and physical objects. Today, it’s a 30-inch diagonal display in a table-like form factor that’s easy for individuals or multiple people to interact with in a way that feels familiar, just like in the real world. To support this advanced functionality, Surface uses cameras to sense objects, hand gestures and touch. This user input is then processed and, using rear projection, displayed on the surface of the device. Surface’s customized software platform is built on top of Windows Vista. Developers and designers simply use the Surface SDK and existing tools that they already know, such as Microsoft Visual Studio and Expressions Studio, to design and develop applications for the device.

WFS: What are some of the possibilities for retail banking?

Gray: While Microsoft Surface isn’t currently deployed in any retail banking scenarios, we envision Surface as a platform that could potentially enable a shift in the way customers learn, service, and buy products in a retail banking environment. In addition, it can be used as a way for customers to browse product information by financial scenario or direct product comparisons as well as in private banker meetings for things like financial planning and account opening.

Microsoft Surface could also enable third-party interactions. For example, it could allow a real estate broker to come into a branch with a customer and walk through the home-buying process. This could include scenarios such as using Microsoft Virtual Earth to view properties for purchase and demonstrate advanced information such as country tax rates, adjoining property tax values, and school district information.

WFS: Banks are still working on getting their online experiences to fit the demands of sophisticated customers. They are also just getting their hands wet when it comes to mobile banking. Where would Microsoft Surface fit in?

Gray: Again, Surface isn’t currently deployed in retail banking, but we believe that banks that choose to begin building their next-generation online and mobile experiences using Microsoft Silverlight – and eventually Surface – will find a distinct advantage attracting, retaining and up-selling customers in their branch environments. The user interface of Surface is composed with Windows Presentation Foundation, which is at the heart of Silverlight as well. This allows banks to reuse digital assets and source code across all multiple platforms to create compelling experiences for customers – while at the same time, using their existing in-house software assets and developer skills.

WFS: What are you doing to make the capabilities of Microsoft Surface real for banks and others?

Gray: Because Microsoft Surface uses Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and the Microsoft .NET Framework for building applications, the barriers for adoption are minimal. Most major banks in the United States build mission-critical applications on the .NET Framework today, so the most important capability for banks is simply to have ideas. The design and development skills are readily available on their own staff’s as well their partner’s ecosystem. To jumpstart the idea process, we have built a retail banking demo application that showcases an anonymous product exploration experience using props like a prepaid gas card mailer that can be dropped and recognized on the Surface to start the interactivity with customers. This demo application, along with the source code, will be made available to banks downloading the Surface SDK to jumpstart their idea process.

WFS: What feedback have you been getting?

Gray: So far, the reaction has been overwhelming. Interest in banking could not be any higher, despite the current crisis. Many of the more aggressive banks are looking at the current environment as an opportunity to jump ahead and capture more customers through innovation in the retail branches where the vast majority of selling and buying takes place.

WFS: How far off do you think we are from seeing it being used in the financial world?

Gray: I believe you will see Surface in the retail banking environment in the next 1-2 years.

WFS: What future innovations can we expect to see from Microsoft on Surface?

Gray: Infusion Development is one of our partners for building financial services solutions, and they are very active in application development for Microsoft Surface. I cannot disclose exactly what they are doing, except to say that they are very much involved as a developer of Surface applications for many industries and customers Microsoft serves.

WFS: How customizable are the Surface applications? What are the programming tools?

Gray: Because Microsoft Surface uses off-the-shelf developer and designer tools based on WPF and .NET, it is an extremely flexible platform. Probably the best thing about it is the reuse across channels for the design and development, so customers don’t have to start from scratch and can consistently reuse assets. The tools to build Surface applications are Visual Studio, Microsoft Expressions and the Surface SDK.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/index.html