Smart Financial Credit Union has agreed to shift its PIN debit processing to the Dallas card-issuing agent TNB Card Services, which already handles its signature debit transactions and manages its credit card program.
TNB, a division of Town North Bank, said Monday that the Houston credit union expects consolidating its processing work to be more efficient and improve service for its 36,000 debit cardholders.
PIN and signature debit transactions will now both be routed through TNB's Fraud Risk Identification Service, which can monitor cardholders' spending patterns to find potentially fraudulent purchases.
"Migrating to one processor allows us to streamline our card operation by eliminating redundancy and improving workflow performance," Corbin Wilson, Smart Financial's vice president of electronic service delivery, said in a TNB press release.
TNB said that other financial companies with multiple processing relationships may want to consolidate their operations as well.
"Processing debit transactions affects multiple layers of the credit union," Dusty Bowers, a TNB senior vice president and its client relationship manager, said in the release. "As the reliance on debit cards continues to grow, streamlining debit card processing will become a necessity to ensure a cost-effective debit card operation."
