Discover Rolling Out Some Products to CUs

HOUSTON – Discover Financial Services, the card arm of Morgan Stanley, has begun offering credit unions who are members of the PULSE EFT Association a limited number of Discover branded products. Discover bought the PULSE network from its bank and credit union owners earlier this year. The three products are the Discover Take One program, in which a CU places postage-paid brochures and Discover card applications in its lobbies and collects revenue for every one of its members who opens a Discover card account in response to the effort; the Discover network In Lobby Cash Advance program; and the Discover network Gift Card program. The Take One program is free to financial institutions, provides quarterly reports and payments, and provides free signage and application materials along with training materials for staff, the card brand said. The In Lobby Cash Advance Program enables the credit union to begin helping Discover card holders take cash advances from their Discover Cards and thus earn more transaction income. The Gift Card program allows the credit union to start selling Discover branded gift cards. PULSE has only begun rolling out the new products recently, according to Cindy Ballard, executive vice president with PULSE. She had no ready statistics on how many CUs have begun to offer any of the products. One CU, the $275 million Red River Employees FCU, headquartered in Texarkana, Texas, began to offer the gift card program. David Rolf, marketing director for the credit union, reports that it has been even more popular than the credit union had expected. But Rolf said that he doubted whether the CU would begin to offer other Discover products since each of the others requires changes to the credit union’s internal operations, that Rolf said, the CU had been unwilling to make.