February 26, 2010
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News: CSCU Gains Strength With Credit Unions
In an interview, the President of Card Services for Credit Unions (CSCU), Robert Hackney, said that the organization will be move involved in the relationship between credit unions and credit card processors. At the time, Hackney was at the CUNA's Governmental Affairs Conference when he made the announcement. Until now, CSCU remained in the background as FIS processed the credit unions debit and credit card transactions. Basically, the organization played more of a role in assisting credit unions aggregate card processing and secure better credit card processing from FIS. The relationship all changed when CSCU began educating credit unions on better business management practices.
Hackney said that the CSCU will be taking on full responsibility for providing FIS debit and credit card processing to credit unions. The company will be adding a new division of sales personnel and increase its card portfolio consultation. FIS's position will not change and it will continue to partner with credit unions to meet their day to day needs. Nearly 3,100 credit unions that offer credit cards are members of CSCU and use FIS for card processing. A small percentage of those credit unions offer debit card services. The company now offers three processing platforms for debit cards and expects to maintain a strong position in the debit card processing market.
FIS offers a variety of processing products including credit card processing, core data processing, ATM driving, call center services, and prepaid and gift card services. According to Hackney, CSCU will be managing 12 to 15 of the more than 352 FIS products. Hackney also alluded to the fact that CSCU would be in control of the relationships between the credit unions and FIS. He also talked of the development of a mobile banking platform to accommodate an upcoming generation that will no longer take the time to write things down to track financial transactions. FIS plans to reassign current employees who have handled the sales of card processing to the credit unions.