FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Fidelity National Information Services (FIS), the card processor for most card issuing credit unions, used Card Services for Credit Unions annual meeting to introduce several upgraded products and services.
In an interview onstage with meeting host Dennis Dupont, Robert Bream, president of North American Card Services for FIS, told the attendees that FIS has upgraded its card portfolio and management tools and services and will roll out improved, easier to use, graphic interface along with entry level collection services.
Bream said the company had a four-fold increase in card transaction volume in recent years and now processed for 70% of card issuing institutions. Loyalty programs are growing the fastest and the company has benefited from allowing issuers to consolidate their rewards programs across different platforms and according to household.
"A number of years ago, different providers for different products began to make it more difficult for issuers to manage a whole host of services, but now issuers can find complete solutions at FIS," Bream said. He also praised the strong relationship with Credit Union 24, one of the nationwide credit union-owned ATM and electronic funds transfer networks where FIS has a reciprocal agreement with Moneypass which allows its client credit unions to get fee-free ATM access as well.
Bream credited the new Web site for Scorecard, FIS card rewards program, for much of the progress in FIS' rewards, largely for making it easier for both cardholders and card issuers to access their rewards accounts and programs.
Scorecard has grown by 30% to 7.2 million accounts, he said.
One of the less flashy but important upgrades the processor has in the wings is improvements to the user interfaces for its different card processing platforms. For many years these have been limited to the so-called green screens that many credit unions found it difficult to access and understand. But Bream said new upgrades, which should be available by the end of the summer, will move past the green screens and present more user-friendly and accessible ways to access account information.
Bream also urged the card executives to start looking more closely at business card services.
"NCUA is taking a more understanding attitude toward business card issuing and we have a robust suite of business services to help you serve those members," he said. "Business cards also carry higher interchange," he added.
Bream touched upon a new effort where FIS will begin offering what he described as "entry level" collections services. These services would not address the problems of really delinquent cardholders but focus on helping CUs keep in contact with cardholders who merely need a first call to remind them of an overdue bill. This product would also available sometime later this year, he said.
Sometimes, the challenge FIS faced was reacting to CUs increased desire for better card portfolio management as well. For example, a Friday afternoon round table discussion on operation efficiency in card portfolio management revealed that some of the CU participants felt frustrated about being able to better control some of the parameters of how FIS protected their portfolios from card fraud.
But Preston Faycus, vice president for fraud management for FIS, explained that part of the problem is that many credit unions don't realize how complicated a lot of the parameters that govern card fraud have been to set.
Faycus explained that only 30% of the card fraud parameters spring from a "rules engine" where the other 70% is derived from industry-wide fraud patterns and data provided by Falcon.
Sometimes, he explained, it can look easy to put rules into place to reduce incidents of fraud but it could carry a lot of unintended consequences, such as cutting off CU members from making legitimate transactions or putting rules into place that really didn't address the card debt.
He used an example of a Florida credit union that noticed a pattern of fraud seemingly tied to a certain electronics store and a certain restaurant. The CU became convinced that card data was being stolen at the restaurant and the fraud perpetrated at the electronics store and they wanted FIS to block transactions from each place.
But Faycus explained that doing this would block members from making legitimate transactions from each place. Instead, he related that FIS worked with investigators to discover the thief at the electronics store and the waiter at the restaurant who was stealing the card data. And since the waiter had been stealing the card data before he swiped the members' cards, blocking the card transactions from the restaurant would not have stopped the fraud but would have led to aggravated members.
–dmorrison@cutimes.com
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