Credit Unions Accelerate Modernization With FinTech Collabs

Credit unions continue to drive modernization efforts, often with a focus on their growing business member segment, and often with a FinTech as a co-pilot. This week’s look at bank-FinTech collaboration finds more credit unions embracing the collaboration trend to accelerate innovation, while a legacy financial institution turns the traditional bank-FinTech tie-up model on its head.

Goldman Broadens Banking-as-a-Service Initiative

While FinTechs are often the ones to drive Banking-as-a-Service innovation, Goldman Sachs has recently taken steps to broaden its own BaaS offering as a legacy financial institution.

Earlier this year reports said Goldman was collaborating with technology giants like Amazon to offer financial services to sellers on the platform. Now, reports in ZDNet said Goldman is looking to broaden that effort to roll out a small business lending program in partnership with Amazon and the Apple Card.

According to Goldman CEO David Solomon, who discussed the initiative on a recent earnings call, the small and medium-sized business (SMB) lending collaboration with Amazon “will allow us to leverage our proprietary digital underwriting decision platform using data shared by Amazon’s third-party sellers to provide inventory and operational financing to support their growth.”

The solution has already been rolled out on a “smaller scale,” he said.

Thunes Enhances Credit Union Global Transfers

B2B cross-border payments technology company Thunes struck an agreement with United Nations Federal Credit Union, a credit union serving the United Nations community. As a global entity, the credit union is adopting Thunes’ global payments and money transfer capabilities to link to its own members and enable movement of funds to land in local currencies for recipients.

The tie-up supports 14 currencies and direct connectivity with member mobile wallets in various markets, according to the credit union’s Chief Member Operations Officer Bill Thomas.

Mambu Links Tech To Aussie Business Bank

Australian business bank Tyro revealed plans to launch its first term deposit product through the adoption of technology from Mambu. In an announcement, Mambu said it will provide its platform to Tyro with a focus on supporting the bank’s product innovation efforts through cloud-based infrastructure and API connectivity capabilities.

Tyro, meanwhile, highlighted the ability for Mambu’s technology to support the bank, which targets small and medium-sized business customers, to embrace what it calls a “compostable banking” strategy, which the company describes as the ability to offer financial services and products more quickly through the adoption of “best-for-purpose” systems and technologies.

Fiserv Broadens Credit Union Reach

As more credit unions embrace digitization, banking technology provider Fiserv recently announced it is adding another credit union to its customer portfolio. American Eagle Financial Credit Union (AEFCU), based in Connecticut, will deploy Fiserv’s DNA core account processing platform, a solution Fiserv noted is designed to be flexible enough to support financial institutions’ own product development and rollout needs.

In a statement, AEFCU Chief Innovation Officer Jim Evans highlighted the need to enable an “Amazon-like experience” for credit union members, while Fiserv President and General Manager of Open Solutions Sam Boggs added, “Credit unions are searching for ways to meet the constantly evolving expectations of their members.”

“The right technology can help them meet and exceed those expectations by making it easier to innovate and deploy new services,” Boggs said.

CheckAlt, Tru Treasury Link For Credit Unions

Two FinTechs are teaming up to support digitization of credit union offerings. Lockbox and treasury management solution provider CheckAlt and credit union service provider Tru Treasury are collaborating on a new initiative to support joint credit union clients to modernize. their corporate payment offerings via both paper and electronic payment solutions.

In a statement, Tru Treasury CEO John Ballantyne highlighted the growing business membership of credit unions and the increasing challenges that credit unions face in servicing their commercial customers through digital, modern solutions.

Regal Software White-Labels AP For Banks

In a new white-labeled solution, Regal Software recently revealed the launch of RegalPay for bank and other financial institutions looking to extend an accounts payable automation solution for their own corporate customers.

RegalPay integrates with businesses’ back-office ERPs to automate B2B payments. For regional and community banks, the platform automatically initiates payments from within the ERP, then sending those instructions to the bank. On a daily basis, the platform also automatically downloads settlement files to reconcile that bank data with corporates’ own ERP and other systems.

Key to the platform, according to Regal Software VP of Delivery Solutions Ed Wertzberger, is that the technology can coexist and integrate with other software solutions within a financial institution and an enterprise.

“It works with any bank and can manage all of the vendor information, payment types, and configuration required to interface with your bank’s payment processing software without any modifications to you system,” he said.