Credit union strategies and solutions for navigating the evolving payments landscape was an industry session lunch panel emphasis at the CO-OP Financial Services THINK 17 conference in New York City.
On the panel: Jess Turner, EVP, North America digital payments and customer engagement, Mastercard; Shazia Manus, chief product and strategy officer, CO-OP Financial Services; Ian Macallister, VP, strategic partnerships (payments division), Early Warning; Dondi Black, VP, product strategy, financial institutions; and Cecilia Frew, SVP, head of North America Visa Direct, Visa.
The panel zeroed in deeply on the new reality which includes expediting payments, interoperability, use cases and business models, and different value propositions.
On whether financial institutions need new payment rails, “No we don’t need new rails. Every single bank and credit union have already connected through two rails already, the ACH rails, and the card rails, so we’ve already built two infrastructures,” Frew said.
The panel also touched on P2P and real-time settlement. “The real-time ubiquity around P2P is one thing,” Macallister suggested. “Would you like to have real time settlement rails? I am sure there are large financial institutions and small ones that would like to know their financial position at the end of the day.”
Macallister also talked about building a relationship with FIS and CO-OP, and other suppliers, with Early Warning’s forthcoming peer-to-peer payments vehicle, Zelle Network, which enables participating institutions to send money to anyone with a U.S. credit union or bank account. Multiple financial institutions have committed to join the Zelle network.
Another discussion topic settled on creating strategy and product for financial institutions, “Play to pay is one way to look at it because the dust around digitization has not fully settled. At CO-OP, we’ve done that for the last 20 something years, connecting people to the emerging types of rails. We consider [CO-OP] that enabler to bring in the community financial institution to the conversation,” Manus said.
For credit unions, it is about understanding what the market needs about payments are and identifying member problems. Black explained, “Bringing more awareness into the market about your role as credit unions.”
