RALEIGH-Credit unions need to use the second half of 2012 to monitor the emerging mobile payments market, because what happens there will influence not just how members use their money but how CU employees do their jobs.
"The biggest competitive thing we've got to keep an eye on is the non-bank wallets that are appearing," said Sue Douglas, SVP enterprise systems and risk at State Employees' CU here and chair of the executive committee for CUNA's Operations, Sales and Service (OpSS) Council. "What is PayPal doing? What is Google Wallet doing? What is Visa prepaid doing? We've got to stay on top of what is happening. Some of these industries will cut out financial institutions if they can; we've got to stay attuned to what's going on, be alert and be asking questions, making sure the consumers understand."
Douglas noted that teller transactions are stagnant at many CUs-hers included-with mobile, online and plastic taking over. As such, SECU tellers are taking classes on insurance, basic lending and more, and will also be transitioned to the phones to aid members, rather than continuing to hire hundreds of employees to staff large call centers ("SECU Projecting $1.5M In Annual Phone Savings With VoIP System," Sept. 5, 2011).
Beyond that, Douglas said that future investments at SECU will largely be devoted toward member-facing technologies, including upgrading existing systems and adding new loan origination software. But those upgrades come with costs beyond just the expense of the systems.
"The more you automate, the more security you've got to wrap around it, so you've got to spend money to protect your infrastructure," said Douglas. She stressed that SECU "will always invest in people, but you can get more bang for your buck if you can automate manual processes."
