WASHINGTON — CSCU President Robert Hackney wants everyone to know that the association's days of being seen as playing a more junior role with card issuing credit unions have ended.

"From now on, CSCU will play a much larger role in the relationship between the majority of credit unions and their card processor," Hackney said in an interview from the trade show floor of CUNA's Governmental Affairs Conference where the organization made its announcement. "This is huge."

From its launch in 1988, the association of credit unions that process their cards with FIS has generally played a smaller role in the credit union card processing space than other organizations, even though a significant majority of credit unions that issue cards process those transactions with the processing giant.