ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. — A new partnership with Mid-Atlantic Corporate FCU subsidiary MY CU Services means that iPay Technologies is now the supplier of online bill pay services for more than half of the nation's credit unions that boast such a service.
"We are at over 1,600 credit unions now and based on what we see from Callahan and our own primary research there are 3,200 credit unions using online bill pay, so that puts us just north of 50%," said iPay president Bill Ready.
Partnership Opens Doors
The technology provider had been working with MY CU Services for some time, but the partnership means that more than 700 natural person credit unions who relied on the corporate subsidiary for their bill pay services will now be using iPay's solution. The new influx boosted iPay's share of the market from around 33% to around 51%, Ready maintained.
CUs that now get their first opportunity to work with iPay should see a few new updates to their product including person to person transfers, expedited payments and a brand new small business offering that Ready said was much different than other solutions in this space. The business suite includes not only bill pay but also account to account transfers and invoicing.
"Small business bill pay in the past, even with the largest players, was much like consumer bill pay with a few extra bells and whistles," Ready explained, noting that iPay will enable business members to do its all their invoicing and accept payment for those invoices electronically. With larger banks continuing to re-trench and pull back from small businesses, iPay's suite may give more credit unions the opportunity to offer a unique product and pick up members to whom they had not previously paid attention.
Though the business solution is a bit more involved, Ready said credit unions using traditional consumer bill pay will be able to quickly make the switch from the previous offerings from MY CU.
'Not Heavy Installed Software'
"It's not heavy installed software; when a CU decides to sign up for the service they can have it up and running in a day or two," he explained. "All of our products are fully hosted and are a turnkey solution. We not only host the product, we brand it for them and take care of all the support and service and we do it as if we were the credit union."
iPay's method of hosting all its offerings means CUs do not have to spend time training its employees and implementation is rapid. But the speed and ease of the solution doesn't mean it lacks solid support; the bill pay solution comes with e-mail inboxes, live chat and specific 800 number for each credit union that is handled by iPay staffers while members still feel like they are dealing with a familiar institution.
