From a credit union's perspective, credit and debit cardproducts can often seem like different animals, driven by separateback-end systems, with unique attributes and functionality.

From a member's viewpoint, they are woven together within thefabric of a greater financial picture. In fact, members viewpayments on a continuum, utilize debit and credit cardsinterchangeably, and expect swift, easy access to accounts and dataanytime, anywhere.

Advancements in fintech are making this type of consumerexperience possible. Here are at least three trends we see demandedby members, and essential for credit unions to meet.

The Perfect Digital Payment: Speedy andSeamless

For modern consumers, a fast payment processes “at the speed ofmobile.”

With so much happening in mobile payments, it can be hard todetermine how to proceed. As a start, every credit union shouldoffer Apple, Samsung and Android Pay. While consumer use of digitalwallets has yet to reach critical mass, many of your members aregiving them a try. And research shows that once consumers load adefault card into an app, more than 70% rarely change that cardout. Getting into this market is an important step in securing “topof phone” status.

The same goes for mobile P2P apps. The popularity of Venmospeaks volumes about the future potential of this market. With somany major players both within and outside our industry offeringP2P payments, this is a market in flux.

For credit unions, important new technology is emerging in thisspace. Early Warning's Zelle digital payments networkpromises to level the P2P playing field by seamlessly connectingvirtually every bank and credit union account in the U.S., which,in turn, will allow consumers to send funds to just about anyonenationwide.

And, unlike Venmo, Zelle transfers process in realtime, giving consumers the instant gratification they value – andexpect. Integration with Zelle should be on every creditunion's product roadmap.

Security: Critical to Cardholder Confidence

The importance of cardholder security cannot be overstated – andit is a true pain point in our field that fraud mitigation toolshave not kept pace with the relentless advance of fraud. Membersare rightly alarmed by breaches. The knee-jerk reaction has been tomake card security so tight that today “false positives”(legitimate transactions wrongly blocked) far outrun real acts offraud, leading to even more member frustration and, of course,millions of dollars of interchange lost.

Help is on the way in the form of machine learning, a keycomponent of artificial intelligence that allows machines toautomatically learn from data and adapt. Once available only togovernmental organizations or the largest corporations, AI isbecoming “democratized,” and attainable for the needs of creditunions.

Specifically from CO-OP Financial Services, machine learningwill be put to work on behalf of credit unions in the fight againstfraud in 2017.

For card payments, machine learning will be used to augmentexisting neural network-based fraud detection systems. These AItools can precisely identify suspicious patterns andvulnerabilities across cardholder transactions, stop attacks inreal time, reduce the incidence of false positives, and incorporatedata into strengthening the transaction scoring model goingforward.

We also recommend empowering your member in their own defenseagainst fraud, by providing card controls and alerts applicationsthat will help them better manage their cards.

Personalization: The Path to Engagement andLoyalty

A truly engaging payments experience is one that is aspersonalized as it is productive. Your members are bombarded withnew card offers. Make it easy for them to stick with you, by makingsure their cards are personally relevant to them and the communitythey live in.

Analytics tools can help you customize your card products,rewards programs and marketing messages by enabling a greaterunderstanding of the member data at your disposal.

There is a truly exciting future just ahead for analytics,enabling credit unions to use these tools to predict memberbehavior better than ever before. Once again, the key is machinelearning, which will give added power to mine and analyze data andgive you even more insights into cardholder behaviors and values.Machine learning is also positioned to be put at the disposal ofcredit union call centers, to improve the customer experience foryour cardholders.

CO-OP Financial Services and TMG JoinForces

To help credit unions deliver payments that are fast, seamless,secure and personalized, CO-OP has acquired long-term strategicpartner TMG, the industry leader in full-service credit processing.The combined forces of CO-OP and TMG provide credit unions with acomprehensive, single ecosystem that will serve them well acrossthe payments spectrum, bringing an integrated experience for all asthe industry continues to grow and evolve.

This is a pivotal step forward on our own transformationjourney, and we are meeting today's debit and credit trends withanticipation and optimism.

Todd Clark is President/CEOfor CO-OP Financial Services. He can be reached at909-948-2500.