A member of a credit union types "how do I replace a lost debit card" into the website at eleven on a Sunday night. The answer is on a help page three clicks deep, and the member does not find it. On Monday the call queue has one more person in it, asking something the website already knew.
A banking chatbot on the public website exists for that moment. This guide covers what one can handle for a bank, credit union or building society, where it has to stop, and why the assistant on your public pages is a different animal from the one inside your app.
Two different assistants that share a name
The phrase "banking chatbot" covers two things that should never be confused.
An authenticated in-app assistant sits behind login. The customer has proved who they are, so it can show a balance, list transactions or help with a payment. Building one is a core banking project with months of work.
A public-website assistant sits in front of login, on the pages anyone can read. It has no connection to accounts and must never pretend to. What it has is everything you publish: product pages, the fees and charges document, branch pages, the help centre, the fraud guidance. It answers from that material, in the visitor's language, at any hour, and it takes details when a person is needed.
This guide is about the second kind, which can be live in an afternoon.
What a public-site banking assistant can answer
Sort a week of general enquiries into the ones that never needed an account lookup. Those are the assistant's job.
Products and eligibility. What the difference is between an easy-access and a notice account. Whether the student account needs proof of a university place. The minimum age for a junior savings account.
Fees published on the site. The charge for an international payment, the overdraft rate on the current account, the fee for a replacement card, whether there is a charge to close an account. If it is in your tariff document, the assistant can quote it.
Branch hours and access. Which branch is open on Saturday, whether the counter closes before the building, whether there is step-free access.
How to open an account. The ID and proof of address you accept, whether a joint account needs both parties present, how long a decision usually takes, whether it can be done online.
Card replacement steps. Where to report a lost card, how to freeze it in the app, how long the new card takes, what to do about a PIN.
Fraud reporting steps. The number to ring, the hours it operates, what to do first if money has already left the account, how to recognise a genuine message from the bank.
Visitor: I think someone has used my card. What do I do? Assistant: Please treat this as urgent. The card and fraud line is open 24 hours on the number shown on the back of your card and on our fraud page. If you have the app, freeze the card now under Card Controls. Do not share your PIN, passwords or any code with anyone, including anyone who rings you claiming to be from us. I cannot see your account from here, but I can pass your name and number to the team if you would like a call back.
That reply does three things: it routes to the fastest channel, it gives the one step the customer can take themselves, and it states plainly that the assistant has no account access.
What it must never do
What a bank website assistant must never do covers this in depth, so here is the short version.
It never accesses, looks up or discusses a specific account, balance or transaction. It never asks for a password, PIN, one-time code or full card number, in any wording. It never recommends which product someone should take out, which is regulated advice. It never suggests an outcome on an application or a complaint. It never reassures someone in financial difficulty in place of routing them to the support team.
And it never answers from memory: if the answer is not on your pages, it says so and fetches someone who knows.
Designing the hand-off
A public-site assistant is only as safe as its escalation. Set it up in tiers.
Immediate routes, no questions asked. Fraud, a lost card with money leaving, a bereavement, a customer who says they are vulnerable or in crisis. The assistant gives the direct line or the dedicated page first, then offers to pass contact details. It should not ask qualifying questions before doing so.
Live hand-over when someone is on duty. During contact centre hours, a colleague in the dashboard inbox can take over the chat. The customer sees a person join; the colleague sees what was already asked. This is the right route for a mortgage enquiry that has gone past the published rate card.
A numbered ticket when nobody is. Outside hours, the assistant takes name, email and phone, opens a ticket and tells the customer when to expect a reply. Complaints always go this way, because a complaint has to enter your formal process with a reference and a clock, not sit in a chat log.
Write the hand-off message yourself. "I cannot help with that from here, and I would not want to guess. The team can, and here is how to reach them" is better than anything generic.
Keeping the answers true
A banking assistant that quotes last quarter's savings rate is worse than none. Decide who owns the rate sheet, the tariff and the branch hours pages, and make refreshing the assistant part of the change process: rate goes live, pages updated, assistant refreshed, the same morning. Point it only at pages you maintain, not the archived press releases or the 2019 PDF.
A worked example
Illustrative only. Say a building society with twelve branches gets 9,000 website visits a month and 1,100 general enquiries by phone and email, of which about 400 are hours, fees, how-to-open and card-replacement questions.
With the assistant on the public pages, most of those 400 are answered in chat, including the ones that arrive on Sunday evening. Perhaps 60 visitors a month who would otherwise have given up leave a mortgage or savings enquiry with contact details, sorted by product. Fraud mentions go straight to the dedicated line within one message. The contact centre keeps the questions that need a human.
What to check before you choose one
- Does it answer only from your content, and say so when it does not know?
- Can you write the hard rules in plain words: no credentials, no account talk, no recommendations?
- Does fraud routing bypass everything else?
- Can a colleague on duty take over a live chat, and does a ticket open when nobody is?
- Does it reply in the member's language?
- Who owns refreshing it when a rate changes?
Credit unions have a particular version of these questions around membership and eligibility, set out in member questions credit unions answer every day. The advice boundary for app-first lenders and payment firms is covered in where a fintech website must not give financial advice.
Where SpideyChat fits
SpideyChat for fintech and banking is a public-website assistant. It reads your published pages, answers general and published information at any hour in the visitor's language, never requests credentials, has no connection to accounts, and routes fraud, hardship, complaints and anything personal or advisory to your team through live hand-over or a numbered ticket. The features page lists what the dashboard inbox and ticketing do.