Stanford Federal Credit Union replaced its home page on the World Wide Web today. This is not strange as the credit union adds, subtracts and tweaks its online presence on most days. The difference today is that SFCU members and other visitors to www.sfcu.orgwill see the home page that the credit union first used ten years ago.
SFCU is celebrating the tenth birthday of its Internet Banking service. It was on November 17, 1993, that SFCU introduced the World’s first online banking service, beating Wells Fargo, Bank America, and just about everybody else by more than a year. To honor the occasion, SFCU will use the commemorative web page as its main page during the week of November 17th.
We knew the anniversary was coming up awhile ago, and we wanted to do something to mark the occasion, indicated Sam Tuohey, the vice president, Information Services, for SFCU. Tuohey and Marketing Vice President Margaret Wold were both working in the credit union’s marketing department on the online and web projects in 1993.
Margaret (now the VP Business Development) and her department conducts campaigns continually attract more users, but we wanted to do something special to acknowledge the member participation that brought this innovation about, Tuohey said. So we got our hands on an old color printout of the original home page. Long-term SFCU employee Teri McMullen had retained the original artwork in digital form, and they put the page together.
The Retro page has the exact look and feel of the first site, but it had to be modified slightly to include links to some of the credit union’s newer services. For members who wish to use the normal home page, there is a link at the bottom of the page that will take them there. The commemorative page also has link to a screen shot of our first version of CUOnline, which back then was available through telnet.
The credit union thought of recreating a working version of original online banking program, it still has the code, but Tuohey said it would probably have been a bad move. There’s not too much to be impressed about with an old telnet screen. It looked like an old fashioned ATM.
The first month that the CUOnline banking service was available, members conducted a total of four inquiries and transactions. In the year 2003, members will use the CUOnline service more than one and a half million times.
For more information, please contact:
Sam Tuohey, VP Information Services, Stanford Federal Credit Union
650-725-7703 or Sam@sfcu.org
Margaret Wold, VP, Business Development, Stanford Federal Credit Union
650-723-8965 or Margaret@sfcu.org
