Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group said Thursday that it will form a strategic partnership with U.S. information technology giant Google to strengthen its retail financial services.
The two firms will develop a service to assist customers in online shopping and payments with the help of artificial intelligence, as part of efforts to deepen engagement with customers' daily lives.
The Japanese megabank group aims to launch an AI agent, which acts autonomously, through the alliance. The envisaged agent will search for products based on conditions set by users, propose optimal payment methods and manage household finances using spending records. Mitsubishi UFJ plans to begin a pilot program by next March.
"There will be considerable synergy from integrating finance into various tools in daily life," Mitsubishi UFJ Senior Managing Corporate Executive Tadashi Yamamoto told a news conference.
Banks in Japan are stepping up efforts to retain individual customers amid growing competition for deposits as resources for lending at a time when domestic interest rates are on the rise.
Mitsubishi UFJ is enhancing its services partly by leveraging expertise from technology giants. It launched comprehensive digital financial services for retail customers under the brand "M-tto" last June, and announced a partnership with U.S. AI powerhouse OpenAI, the developer of generative AI chatbot ChatGPT, in November.
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