CO-OP Financial Launches Cardholder Relief Solutions Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

CO-OP Financial Services has launched a series of programs to help its credit clients relieve financial stress their members experience as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the company announced on Wednesday (March 25).

The cardholder payment relief solutions will enable credit unions that use the California-based company to adopt a plan to ease payment schedules for cardholders, the firm said.

“As a partner to our clients, CO-OP is taking swift and meaningful action to help them support their members in this unprecedented time,” said CO-OP President and CEO Todd Clark in a statement.

Full-service credit clients of CO-OP can implement the new provisions for May statements as long as they opt for them by Friday, April 10.

CO-OP is offering three cardholder payment relief solutions, including a skip payment option, which would allow a cardholder to miss making the minimum credit card account payment; interest relief, allowing cardholders to forgo any new interest while the program is in effect; and fee relief, which would let cardholders forgo any new fees for cash advances, late payments or returned checks while the program is in effect.

In addition to those three solutions, credit clients can use several cardholder settings on an individual cardholder basis by using CO-OP’s Springboard app. The application gives credit unions real-time access to cardholder account information in one place. The actions that can be taken to bring payment relief to cardholders include deferred payment (delaying the minimum payment due by a month), temporary credit line changes (increasing a cardholder’s credit line for a certain period of time), stop interest accrual (so that fees and finance charges won’t post to an account), minimum payment update, and a hold that suspends delivery of statements.

“We’re in this together with our clients,” said Clark. “We are working on additional solutions across our product sets and client base, and we will be communicating those initiatives promptly. CO-OP maintains a highly dispersed workforce, in which working remotely is business as usual — so we are moving full speed ahead to help our clients in these very unique circumstances.”