Over the last 12 months, Corporate One Federal Credit Union has advanced its mission to become a leading credit union voice in faster payments. Recent announcements of Charles Harkness to the Governance Framework Formation Team (GFFT) facilitated by the Federal Reserve and Keith Riddle to The Clearing House’s (TCH) Real-Time Payments (RTP) Advisory Committee mark important milestones for the Columbus-based corporate credit union that serves more than 800 credit unions nationwide.
In 2015, The Federal Reserve established the Faster Payments Task Force to fuel the United States’ organized and secure move to real-time payments. The Task Force, which issued its final recommendations in the summer of 2017, was established to identify and evaluate alternative approaches for implementing safe, ubiquitous, real-time payments capabilities in the United States. It envisions all payment service providers having the ability to receive faster payments and to make those funds available to their end-user customers in real time by 2020.
“In 2016, our board of directors made it a strategic initiative for Corporate One to leverage its payments expertise and take a leadership role in developing and helping deliver world-class faster payments solutions here in the United States,” said Corporate One president/CEO Lee Butke. “As a trusted provider of payment solutions to credit unions for more than five decades, being a leading and representative voice for our members and our industry during the momentous transition to real-time payments is a strategic imperative for us. Certainly, having a seat at the table on the GFFT and on the RTP Advisory Committee are tremendous opportunities for Corporate One to participate in formative discussions and to develop a deeper understanding of the real-time payments solutions credit unions will need to succeed in the future.”
Harkness, who also served on the Faster Payments Task Force, is the only credit union representative on the GFFT, which was established in late 2017 to help develop and establish an initial faster payments governance framework for the U.S. Riddle was invited to participate on the RTP Advisory Committee earlier this year. The committee is charged with providing perspectives that will help TCH’s RTP, which was launched as the first real-time payments rail in the U.S. in November 2017, continue to be responsive to all financial institutions and drive adoption of RTP in an effort to achieve the goal of ubiquity by 2020.
Other faster payments efforts at Corporate One have focused on deepening its understanding of and bringing real-time payments use cases to market for credit unions quickly so they can remain competitive and relevant financial providers. Most notably, such efforts have included:
• Signing on as one of the first organizations to use a cloud-based testing environment to simulate connectivity to TCH’s real-time payments network.
• Partnering with the Ohio-based non-profit startup accelerator Fintech71, an innovation outpost for the top financial services companies in the U.S.
• Forming a new internal division called “Enterprise Solutions Development” focused on strengthening Corporate One’s ongoing commitment to developing and delivering innovative solutions to the credit union market.