Wescom's A2A statistics bear this out. At the end of 2001, its A2A transfers totaled $18,169,607. Four years later, at the end of 2005, A2A transfers at the credit union totaled $85,469,547-a virtually steady fourfold increase.

Guilford is not surprised-for the consumer, the technology is a no-brainer. "Let's say we have a member who has a son or daughter at college back East. This person wants to send the child in college $500 every two weeks for living expenses, but doesn't want to send a check or that type of thing. The child has a checking account at a bank on the East coast. They can go into home banking and set up a recurring ACH transfer to that child's checking account back East and have it automatically go to the other account every other Friday, say. The child sees funds going into the checking account and can write checks on it. The member has the ease of setting it up and forgetting about it."

Implementation wasn't much more difficult. Wescom developed its A2A technology on its own on its home-banking system, following ACH standards. "Once you get into home banking," he said, "you have the ability to do A2A transfers. We've been doing it successfully for a number of years. There are no roadblocks in my mind."

For credit unions that have yet to hop on the A2A bus, however, the roadblock is apt to be concerns over security and liability. "You have two different things to consider," Guilford said. "If you're sending credits, there's virtually no risk because the member is sending money out of the account to another institution. If you're originating an ACH debit-that is, you're pulling money out of another institution into your account here at Wescom-there can be some risk because you may or may not be authorized to do that. Ultimately that could be a fraudulent transaction." He said Wescom does a number of screenings and verification on ACH to make sure that members are not sending an ACH transaction to a fraudulent account. We have not had any losses on our ACH A2A since we originated it. We have had some unauthorized transactions, but they've all been recovered."

Nonetheless, accepted wisdom is that you give your members reasons to consolidate their financial business with you-you don't help them do business with other financial institutions lest you lose them completely. "That was certainly a fear five years ago," Guilford conceded. "In fact it has not turned out to be that way at all. Because you give them that capability doesn't mean that all of a sudden the funds are going to flow out of your institution."

In May, Wescom did $3.5 million in credits and $2.4 million in debits-a total of about 6,000 transactions or ACH transfers in all. "I don't want to say it's equal, but we're getting almost as much in debits as we are in credits in any given month. This bodes well. Our members love it. It's a sticky application. It gives them the convenience they're looking for and it tends to bring them in as a primary financial institution," said Guilford. – [email protected]