ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – PSCU Financial Services yesterday announced it paid its member credit unions a $45.4 million dividend, fueled by the sale of $35 million of stock the payments processing CUSO held in MasterCard and Visa.
Also enabling the payout was a 12% increase in revenue, to $633 million for 2008. Transaction volume was up 17.4% for the year, to 950 million credit, debit and bill payment transactions. The total number of accounts serviced by the CUSO grew by over one million to 13 million, which represents a 8.6% increase over 2007. In addition, the cooperative’s Contact Center handled 16 million calls, or 1.7 million more calls than the previous year.
The CUSO paid out 85% of this year’s dividend in cash to its more than 600 credit union owners. The remainder will be deposited in a revolving fund to be paid out at a later date.
The cooperative structure allowed PSCU to distribute its earnings to member-owners as tax-free patronage dividends. It has issued more than $226 million in patronage dividends since it became a cooperative in 1994.
PSCU provides processing services for more than 1,300 credit unions.
