ENGLEWOOD, Colo. - Member Emporium partnered with Myway.com in late February of this year to offer CU members a portal product. Member Emporium is the e-commerce division of credit union Internet solutions provider cavion.com. The Member Emporium Personal Start Page Portal is chock full of news, stock quotes, search engines, calendars and other portal-like content features. It is set up to block competitive advertising, and each credit union can personalize it based on their localities, interests and member preferences. But transaction power is one of the strengths of Member Emporium, said cavion.com CEO Dave Selina. Member Emporium partnered with Stockwalk.com to offer members online brokerage services. Credit unions are not providing the service but they can stay in front of the members by co-branding it. They can also promote other CU products while members are using the brokerage component. Member Emporium online features include Internet banking, bill pay, lending, and auto buying. Credit unions can offer ISP service through the portal, as well as free e-mail. Selina said cavion.com has also been able to set up a number of deep discount relationships with popular companies. "Member Emporium offers everything from retail Internet service, to goods and insurance. The difference I think is that Member Emporium is driving substantial discount back to the consumer. Someone who wants to buy a $100 pair of shoes from Rockport, can get them at almost a 30% cheaper price through us," said Selina. In some cases cavion.com has gone directly to vendors to get these deep discounts, but it also works with aggregators who can offer discounts on products from a number of companies. "The plan is to make it part of the credit union. Members can log in through their credit union's home page or via the Net banking system. We do ad blocking. We don't put bank credit card ads out there. Obviously there's a lot of revenue to be make with (banner ad) click throughs," said Selina. Member Emporium shares that revenue with participating credit unions, said Selina. Currently there are no fees for credit unions to offer the portal. Selina said the product has been rolled out, or on the verge of being rolled out, by about a dozen credit unions. "We're going to start an aggressive sales campaign soon." Selina said another benefit of Member Emporium is leveraging off of existing related products, such as cavion.com's credit union only private network, CUiNet. -
pgentile@cutimes.com
