RICHARDSON, Texas - For members at Texans Credit Union, gone are the days of talking trash with their kids.
Instead parents can go online to ask their children to take out the garbage-and then pay them for a job well done using the CU's new online allowance and chore management system.
"Parents can log-in and manage each child's allowances and chores," explained Chris Walton, vice president, product development at the $1.7-billion credit un ion. The system, provided by Dallas-based PAYjr, Inc., allows parents to choose from a drop-down menu of 25 chores or add a unique chore.
"You could set up a chore, such as 'Make Your Bed Monday through Friday,' and then assign a dollar value, from a penny to anything you want," Walton continued.
Say goodbye to the days of nagging, too. PAYjr can electronically remind children via e-mail or text message to complete their chores. After the children complete their chores, they can log-in separately to PAYjr to check-off the chore.
"At that point, it's similar to kids invoicing their parents," said Walton. "And the parents can choose to automatically pay when the child checks-off the chore or just to receive notification before they verify the job and pay."
TCU's "online kid pay" is a new take on an age-old family process, a tactic that attempts to drop the credit union's products, such as savings, checking, and prepaid products, smack dab in the middle of members' daily activities, Walton said.
"Our current emphasis is on developing and growing the relationship with our families and anchoring the relationship with our parent members," he said. "Our membership is, in large part, middle-market, upscale types of families who are likely to have kids and who are likely to be heavy tech users."
The system also teaches children that money doesn't grow on trees, said Walton.
"PAYjr helps parents to instill a strong work ethic in their kids by showing them the way money works," he said. "It ties the reward of an allowance to a set of achievements. In the end, the kids will see satisfaction from a day's work."
Texans CU chose to house PAYjr outside of the home-banking platform so that any member can participate in the service, said Walton. Payments are funded from the member's checking account via an interface between the credit union and PAYjr.
Children 13 years of age and older can receive payments on TCU's prepaid card, whereas younger kids get paid into a savings account.
PAYjr goes a step further than other electronically-funded prepaid cards, Walton added.
"Other systems just provide the cards and an online mechanism to fund them," Walton said. "They don't tie in the processes by which kids earn money."
Although 450 of Texans CU's 160,000 members are currently using PAYjr, Walton expects adoption to take off when the system is in full swing. TCU took the roll-out in three phases: in October, the credit union launched the chore management and calendar platform. Adoption should "jump significantly" this month, as the prepaid program is made available and next month, when TCU offers the savings program, said Walton.
"When we put the financial transactions around this stuff, we'll see what parents really think," he said. The credit union also plans to measure how the program affects products-per-household rates.
Though Walton doesn't have children, he added that "my wife is using PAYjr to schedule my chores."
