Credit union members have a new definition of trust when it comes to their choice of financial institutions. Delivering the right products and services to meet daily needs rivals data protection, security, and personal relationship as the key factor when trusting a financial institution. Today’s modern members are looking for convenient, always-on digital payment solutions, rich loyalty rewards, and financial institutions that anticipate their needs. If they don’t find that with their credit union, they will look elsewhere.
A product roadmap aligned with members’ needs
Co-op is committed to supporting our partner credit unions by delivering seamless, omnichannel experiences that meet members’ evolving daily needs and help them address their biggest concerns in the new year. Co-op offers an interconnected technology ecosystem that provides integration, convenience and accessibility to build usage, drive deeper member engagement and growth, now and into the future.
“Co-op has introduced more than 150 solutions over the past five years and built a payments ecosystem that fully supports integrated credit and debit processing,” says Bruce Dragt, Chief Product Officer at Co-op. “This enables our credit union partners to create powerful, efficient operations that easily and securely connect to member-facing digital solutions, regardless of their core platform provider or digital banking provider.”
Co-op’s Roadmap centers around foundational solutions that will drive the highest member engagement and smooth credit union operations to maximize efficiency and investment.
“We closely monitor consumer and industry trends, fund our own proprietary research and, most importantly, listen to credit unions,” Dragt says. “We solicit credit union input through our annual Client Relationship Study, our Co-op Co-Creation Councils of client partners, Client Task Forces and Product Validation Program. Our roadmap is not created in a vacuum – we’re proud of the deep, collaborative relationships we’ve built with our credit union partners and that shows in how we drive innovation.”
Co-op’s roadmap initiatives are aligned with credit unions’ top priorities – experiences, earnings, and expenses. We’ve homed in on two key themes designed to accelerate credit union growth: Deepened Lifestyle Engagement and a Modern Payments Platform.
Deepened lifestyle enablement through active, daily engagement
The key to deepening member relationships is activating a strategy of lifestyle enablement – creating active, daily engagement with members through solutions that support convenient money movement and management. These include:
- Co-op Pay-Over-Time Transactions -- gives members convenient control over their financial wellness by allowing them to select and pay back recent eligible credit transactions over several months versus a single billing cycle.
- Co-op Digital Card Issuance -- adds push-to-wallet and push-to-merchant APIs, both of which will allow credit union developers to build faster, more convenient ways for members to use their digitally-issued cards.
- Co-op Lifestyle Loyalty -- this rewards program is a cornerstone that we’ll continue to build upon to expand member engagement for credit unions.
Co-op continues to partner with digital providers to pre-enable fully integrated digital solutions for credit unions. Our unique payments ecosystem means we can work with the digital banking providers our credit unions partner with, and credit unions benefit from the scale achieved working with Co-op.
A modern payments platform to meet members where they are—today
A modern payments platform is vital to promoting money movement and its related financial experiences. Credit unions can create powerful efficiencies by connecting front-end solutions to operational tools that service members, protect them from fraud and collect integrated data insights.
The Co-op payments ecosystem strengthens credit union operations through an integrated, data-driven infrastructure that supports today’s digital-first solutions.
- Co-op Springboard -- an important expansion of this powerful, integrated, and intuitive solution that gives credit unions access to credit and debit cardholder account and transaction information, as well as program configuration management, in a single application.
- Co-op Pay Network -- a debit network created to give credit unions compelling benefits, unique in the marketplace, along with continued support to bolster their point-of-sale profitability. This includes insightful analytics, a single point of contact for service from Co-op, and integration with the Co-op ecosystem.
- Co-op Developer Portal -- new integration options including Software Development Kits (SDKs) and drop-in user interfaces (UIs) give credit unions and their third-party developers more ways to seamlessly and quickly connect their systems to the Co-op ecosystem.
- Co-op Insights Center -- simplifies complex credit and debit portfolio information, giving credit unions the technology to quickly analyze cardholder data, understand the health of their portfolios and activate their data in meaningful ways. The enhanced solution will feature new reporting able to capture more data.
Fraud solutions that drive operational efficiencies and an improved member experience
Embedding the latest fraud prevention technology and expertise within the payments platform doesn’t just protect credit unions from losses and keep them ahead of fraud trends; it’s imperative for growth.
- Co-op Resolution Center -- a new enhancement that will integrate PIN performed card transactions from multiple PIN network providers, will create a streamlined user experience into a single platform.
- IDCheck by Co-op -- a new offering will provide an integrated identity and authentication solution so credit unions can combat fraud across the member journey within multiple channels, and fight account takeover fraud more effectively.
By listening to and working directly with credit unions, we’ve aligned our roadmap initiatives and pace of investment to their priorities – experiences, earnings, expenses. This is why we’re committed to delivering foundational solutions that will smooth credit union operations to maximize efficiency and investment, while also designing convenient member experiences that deepen lifestyle engagement.
Utilizing the strength of the Co-op ecosystem, credit unions have access to a modern payments platform to make every experience matter now and into the future.
Learn more
To learn more about how Co-op is evolving the modern payments platform for credit unions to meet your and your members’ needs, visit Inside the Co-op Roadmap. To request more information on any of the Roadmap products, please contact your Co-op Representative, call 800.782.9042 or email solutions@coop.org.
