Payment options and consumer convenience are all the rage. You can’t peruse a credit union trade publication or website without reading about the growth of fintech and financial management applications and how they affect the relationship you have with your members.

And these are things we should be talking about. Technology and changing consumer expectations will have an impact on traditional financial transactions, and credit unions have to be prepared to meet this consumer demand, or risk losing engagement with a future generation of members.

However, credit unions should not lose sight of the implications that deploying new payment technology has on the back end and on the bottom line.

One of the most critical parts of payment processing is the settlement of funds to your members’ accounts. Initially, when you launch a new payment channel, it may be okay to have a team member manually run reports and process the individual credits that have been issued to an operating account at the financial institution. However, as your payment volume increases, this approach will become more and more prone to human error, especially when the person who usually does this work is out. As the number of transactions goes up, it may also be harder for staff to process them in a timely fashion without sacrificing other work duties.

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