COLUMBUS, Ohio-Mark Sievewright admits that discussing the future of plastic payment cards is difficult with the onset of mobile and alternative payment methods.
"That is hard to do," the president of credit union solutions at Fiserv told attendees at the Ohio CU League annual meeting here. "Mobile will soon take the lead over plastic, and long term, the plastic card does not have a future."
While that may be a difficult future for some to envision, Sievewright pointed out how far technology has advanced in the last 10 years, and to go back a decade and think about how today's payments methods would likely not be considered.
But Sievewright warned that the quickly emerging payments types, even beyond mobile, have to garner credit unions' attention, stating that CUs need to stay abreast of new threats to their interchange streams.
"Your payments competitors today, can you name them?" Sievewright asked. "You could easily do that 10 years ago. I wonder if we each came up with our own list of names, would our lists look the same. I doubt it today."
Sievewright cited the emergence of PayPal, Dwolla, and other P2P solutions, and said that unless the credit union is innovating, "you are not doing your job, which is to make the credit union successful."
Credit unions are going to have to begin to think more out-of-the-box, insisted Sievewright, and get involved with alternative payments, and do the things they need to do to remain relevant with their members.
Payment Competitor: Facebook?
It is hard to predict today just how different the payments landscape could become, said Sievewright, stating that while it would seem impossible, it's not out of the question major social network platforms could merge and become a threat to payments. He said he already considers Facebook a potential payments venue. "We just don't think about them that way. These new types of companies are impinging on your business, little by little, but they are simply not top of mind like Bank of America."
Sievewright pointed to a new payments solution called SpendSmart, a prepaid reloadable debit card from BillMyParents.com that his daughter used recently during a trip to Spain. "She went there for eight days with no cash, checks, or credit card. She just used BillMyParents.com. Parents put money on these cards for their kids. This is for real. And you know how much of that money she spent went toward a financial institution's interchange revenue? Zero."
Fiserv is based in Brookfield, Wis.
