LAS VEGAS—CU Wallet, the credit union-owned digital walletsolution, announced at the Money2020 conference it has contractedwith Massachusetts-based mobile wallet developer Paydiant.

The Paydiant tools that will power CU Wallet will be provided inwhite label form, which means the Paydiant brand is invisible.Paydiant is currently used by Barclays Bank and Paydiant co-founderChris Gardner said in an interview on the conference's exhibitfloor that Bank of America is conducting a trial of his company'sservices.

The driving idea behind CU Wallet, which was founded by digitalbanking pioneer Paul Fiore and Ongoing Operations CEO Kirk Drake, is to providecredit unions with a state-of-the-art mobile commerce tool thatwill enable retail point of sale transactions. More than 20 creditunions have also signed on with the expressed intent of creating aCUSO to support the effort.

Paydiant also recently announced a deal with the Subway restaurant chain, which has 40,000+ locations, where itstools will be built into the Subway mobile app.

Fiore said in an interview at the event that Paydiant willenable CU Wallet to speed up its introduction to members. Heestimated the initial credit union rollouts will occur by the endof the year, three months sooner than he had previously stated.

Gardner said another key advantage of Paydiant is that its toolshave been developed to work with existing retail infrastructuresand cellphones.

“There is no need to buy new hardware to use the Paydiantwallet,” he said.

Fiore stressed that credit unions will control CU Wallet,including majority ownership.

CU Wallet is still looking for founding credit union owners, hesaid. The present group of interested parties ranges in size fromcredit unions with fewer than $100 million in assets to the $6billion San Diego County Credit Union.

Credit unions that have already signed on to CU Wallet represent2.8 million members, Fiore said. With as few as 10 million members,CU Wallet would have ample bulk to be of considerable interest topotential retail outlets, he added.

Going forward, Fiore said CU Wallet will focus on developingunique rewards, offers and discounts at participating retailers. CUWallet is investigating additional enhancements to its paymentstools, but Fiore said building in person-to-person payment tools isnot a current priority.

Credit unions that have agreed to participate in CU Walletinclude $747 million Quorum Credit Union in Purchase, N.Y.; the$2.29 billion Affinity Federal Credit Union in Basking Ridge, N.J.;the $979 million Workers' Credit Union in Fitchburg, Mass.; the$1.45 billion Arizona State Credit Union in Phoenix; $1.6 billionUniversity Federal Credit Union in Austin, Texas; the $3.2 billionKinecta Federal Credit Union in Manhattan Beach, Calif.; the $1.8billion Washington State Employees Credit Union in Olympia, Wash.;the $2.5 billion Northwest Federal Credit Union in Herndon, Va.;the $3.5 billion DFCU Financial in Dearborn, Mich.; the $398million City & County Credit Union in St. Paul, Minn.; the $870million TwinStar Federal Credit Union in Lacey, Wash.; $697 millionOne Nevada in Las Vegas; and, the $5 billion Digital Federal CreditUnion in Marlborough, Mass.