SAN DIMAS, Calif. -Who would have known a purchase card could besuch an important asset for credit unions, but based on theperformance of Procura LLC's PurchaseONE, it can be. A purchasecard is a payment vehicle that can replace the typical accountspayable method, said Dennis Toda, vice president, operationalintegrity for WesCorp. Toda is WesCorp's executive sponsor for thedevelopment of the PurchaseONE card. Earlier this year WesCorpteamed with PSCU Financial Services, MEMBERS Development Company(which is owned by CUNA Mutual and credit unions) and Credit UnionFinancial Services Limited Partnership to create the Procura CUSO.Procura is owned equally by the four entities, which eachcontributed $200,000. According to Toda the program kicked off inJune and 11 credit unions (see listing) have signed on to usePurchaseONE. Procura had set a goal of 10 by year-end. A purchasecard is essentially a commercial credit card, and as such is basedaround interchange as a consumer card is. "The issuer who owns theBIN (batch identification numbers) has the right to thatinterchange. That's all well and good if you're greedy. We'retaking that and applying the credit union philosophy of sharing,"said Toda. In this case WesCorp owns the BIN. PurchaseONE users getwhat's known as a "spend rebate." They have to spend between $1.2million and $2.5 million in a quarter to get money back. They canget up to 100 basis points per dollar. Spending at least $1.2million a quarter may sound hard to do, but Toda said when youconsider things like data processing contracts, facilities work,ATM suppliers and other high-dollar transactions, many CUs canreach the threshold. Credit unions can centralize the majority oftheir vendor payments through the purchase card, thus all thebranches can use it to help rack up payment volume. Toda said toget a PurchaseONE card credit unions only need to make a one-timepayment of $12,000. Toda said when he's explained the PurchaseONEcard to some CFOs and other CU execs they think it's "almost toogood to be true," so they're hesitant. Toda calls it a "no-brainer"for most CUs. He expects some $6 to $7 million will be spent onPurchaseONE this year and by next year it will grow to $50 to $60million. "Within two or three years from now it could be hundredsof millions of dollars," said Toda. He said with CU margins underduress, this is one more way to get some money back. Teachers CU,South Bend, Indiana, has been using a purchase card for three yearsand is spending to the tune of about $11 million a year. That'sabout 40-60% of their accounts payable, which is typical forpurchase card users said Toda. The rebate is one advantage, butPurchaseONE also cuts down on the paper-intensive accounts payableprocess at credit unions. PurchaseONE is integrated into a creditunion's general ledger to make payments easier. A firm called Worksout of Texas handles the technology. Toda said, aside from a creditunion having to extract files from accounts payable, there isminimal impact to a CU's IT operations because PurchaseONE isWeb-based. Works builds the purchasing authority hierarchy of thePurchaseONE card however the credit union wants. For example allbranch managers may have full authority, while other employees mayonly be able to buy from certain vendors. So why can't a creditunion just get their own purchase card? It's not easy to do.Processors want users to have in the neighborhood of $100 millionin purchases and a few thousand users to issue them a commercialBIN. In this case, WesCorp owns the BIN and along with the otherProcura owners has established the spend-rebate parameters (seechart). [email protected]