PSCU, a St. Petersburg, Fla.-based payments CUSO, announced this month that it will issue an annual tax-free patronage dividend of $29.6 million to its more than 850 owner credit unions for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
The cooperative’s revenue grew 5.5% for the fiscal year, as it experienced strong performance from its payment processing and card program marketing services.
It also reported:
- 7% growth in debit, credit, prepaid and online bill payment transactions, which numbered 2.1 billion last year.
- 11% increase in accounts serviced, which numbered about 20 million.
- Prevention of nearly $150 million in fraud losses for credit unions, maintaining an exceptional industry low fraud to sales loss of $.0625 per $100.
President/CEO Chuck Fagan said a year ago that PSCU’s fraud-loss-to-sales ratio was around $0.08 per $100 spent, which he said is below the industry average of about $0.14 per $100 spent, in part because PSCU uses human fraud-detection staffers 24/7 rather than relegating the work to automation on the weekends and evenings.
The CUSO has issued $465 million in patronage dividends – of which nearly 50% has been distributed in cash – since becoming a cooperative in 1994.
The annual meeting of PSCU’s owner credit unions will be held April 6 in Palm Desert, Calif., during PSCU’s annual Member Forum conference.