Think of it as Shark Tank with a credit union spin, and it’s just been renewed for another season.
The 2025 Innovation Series from CreditUnions.com and Callahan & Associates is underway. Every year since 2018, this series has offered a select group of suppliers 10 minutes each to impress an audience of credit union decision-makers. It’s simple: Each vendor pitches its offerings and attendees vote on their favorites.
The Innovation Series was a hit from the get-go and continues to grow in popularity. This year’s focus areas include financial wellness, member experience, lending, digital, analytics, and member engagement.
Read on for more from this year’s digital finalists ASAPP Financial Technology, Boucoup, Nymbus, Q2 – Engage. Plus, make sure to join us for the Innovations In Digital webinar. Register today!
ASAPP Financial Technology
Describe your innovation.
ASAPP Financial Technology delivers the most complete Omnichannel Experience Platform, combining origination and engagement feature sets to support credit unions in their journey to originate, onboard, understand, and grow member relationships.
What opportunity or challenge does it address?
In an era where consumers demand consistent and engaging interactions across digital, mobile, and in-branch channels, delivering seamless, omnichannel customer experiences pose both a challenge and opportunity for credit unions.
ASAPP OXP® platform solves this by:
- Integrating with the credit unions existing core systems.
- Offering robust features like CRM, ECM, and the ASAPP OXP Opportunity Engine™.
- Enabling credit unions to enhance member engagement, streamline account and lending origination processes, and maintain a competitive edge against direct-to-consumer fintech solutions.
This strategic approach not only improves operational efficiency but also fosters stronger customer relationships and loyalty.
How does it increase member value?
Platform Approach: The platform leverages feature sets ranging from account and lending origination to CRM and ECM capabilities. Individually, these features empower credit unions to grow their member base and gain new accounts. Coupled together, the feature sets support credit unions as they drive ROI and share-of-wallet growth through personalized, seamless member service.
Omnichannel Integration: The platform provides a user-friendly experience across multiple channels, including web, mobile, and in-branch interactions. This ensures that members can engage with the credit union through their preferred method, enhancing convenience and satisfaction.
Marketing Automation: The platform automates various processes, such as lead generation and member onboarding. This not only speeds up credit union operations but also reduces errors, leading to a more efficient and engaging member experience. Finally, this supports enhanced product up-sell/cross-sell capabilities and results.
What differentiates this innovation from competitors?
Unlike many solutions that offer fragmented services, ASAPP OXP® platform provides a seamless, end-to-end experience by integrating CRM, ECM, and the ASAPP OXP Opportunity Engine™ into a single, cohesive system. This holistic approach not only simplifies the user experience but also enhances operational efficiency for credit unions. Additionally, ASAPP Financial Technology’s commitment to continuous innovation ensures that their platform evolves with the latest technological advancements, keeping clients ahead of the curve in a rapidly changing financial landscape.
Boucoup
Describe your innovation.
Boucoup is a white-label family banking app designed to enhance financial education and family money management, providing credit unions with a powerful tool to support their members while retaining data and fostering long-term relationships. With features like educational content, goal-setting tools, chore-based income tracking, and more, Boucoup empowers families to engage in real-world money management, building financial confidence for the next generation.
What opportunity or challenge does it address?
Many credit unions currently view youth banking as a charitable initiative rather than a strategic growth opportunity. Boucoup addresses this challenge by offering a white-label family banking app that helps credit unions attract new families, increase loan and product adoption per household, and ensure a seamless transition from youth to adult membership.
Through features like educational content, saving goals, and chores, Boucoup provides families with real-world money management experiences while fostering financial literacy and confidence in youth. This creates an opportunity for credit unions to deepen long-term member relationships, retain valuable data, and position themselves as trusted financial partners for families, increasing member loyalty and lifetime value across generations. Boucoup is the solution that helps credit unions move from short-term transactional youth banking to a powerful tool for sustained growth and engagement.
How does it increase member value?
Designed to alleviate financial insecurity and build confidence in the next generation, Boucoup empowers credit unions to be heroes for families. Through innovative features like “Money Shorts” — one-minute, TikTok-style financial literacy videos — and experiential tools like “Loan from a Parent,” where kids learn about loans by repaying parents, Boucoup helps cultivate financial literacy and security in young members.
Beyond educational content, Boucoup provides parents with a seamless way to manage and guide their children’s financial activities within the credit union, eliminating friction and streamlining the process. By driving long-term member engagement and delivering real value to families, Boucoup helps credit unions build strong, lasting relationships with their members, positioning them as trusted financial partners for generations.
What differentiates this innovation from competitors?
Boucoup offers credit unions a unique advantage over competitors like Greenlight by focusing on long-term member growth and loyalty. Unlike other platforms that divert deposits and interchange, Boucoup ensures these stay within the credit union, strengthening its financial ecosystem and auto loan growth. Its experiential approach to financial education goes beyond transactional management, fostering financial confidence in youth and creating a seamless transition to adult membership. By aligning with credit unions’ brand values, Boucoup positions them as trusted family financial partners, driving deeper member relationships and sustained growth.
Nymbus
Describe your innovation.
Nymbus Launch helps credit unions bring their growth strategy to life with a modern banking solution — integrating people, processes, and technology to launch and grow quickly without the complexity and need for a core conversion. This one-of-a-kind solution enables credit unions to quickly and efficiently establish full-service digital brands to expand their digital offerings through tailored banking experiences, helping them reach new member segments, enhance customer loyalty, and attract new members with minimal disruption to existing operations.
Michigan State University FCU ($8.2B, East Lansing, MI) introduced a trio of digital brands serving multiple member segments across the banking journey and life stages while expanding its field of membership:
- AlumniFi, which supports graduates with student debt repayment tools.
- Collegiate, designed for students with flexible budgeting features and financial literacy resources.
- Its latest venture, Pillur, serves small businesses with integrated cash flow management and invoicing.
Vantage West Credit Union ($3.1B, Tucson, AC) recognized the unique financial needs of gig workers and freelancers and created HUSTL, a new digital banking experience separate from its legacy brand.
What opportunity or challenge does it address?
Today’s credit unions face increasing competition from digital-first challengers and struggle with outdated technology that hinders growth. Nymbus Launch provides a modern, cloud-based solution that bypasses these constraints. It helps credit unions stay competitive by enabling rapid, cost-effective, digital-first banking experiences that are ready to deploy, enabling new paths to growth and member acquisition.
How does it increase member value?
Nymbus Launch increases credit unions’ member value by providing a bespoke, digital-first banking experience that enhances convenience, personalization, and financial well-being for specific member segments. Members benefit from seamless, user-friendly digital banking experiences, including mobile apps and online banking, plus features like instant account opening, digital payments, and automated financial tools.
What differentiates this innovation from competitors?
Nymbus Launch stands out from its competitors by offering a turnkey solution that enables credit unions to quickly scale their digital banking capabilities without disrupting their legacy operations with a side-car core model.
Additionally, Nymbus’ fully managed service model eliminates the complexity of launching new digital brands by handling everything from strategy and marketing to back-office operations, compliance and fraud, and a fully equipped call center.
Q2 Engage
Describe your innovation.
Q2 Engage enables credit unions to build lasting relationships with their members by offering a suite of consumer banking solutions designed to deliver personalized experiences. Q2 Engage utilizes data and AI to curate tailored experiences based on segmented user behavior, helping credit unions improve satisfaction, loyalty and growth.
What opportunity or challenge does it address?
Over the last decade, as digital banking became an indispensable member convenience, it also dulled community credit unions’ sharpest weapon against surging competition: Face-to-face relationships.
That’s why we introduced Q2 Engage, a suite of member banking solutions designed to acquire and build lifetime relationships through dynamic personal experiences. Q2 Engage includes all existing and new member banking solutions from Q2.
Each works in harmony or on its own, so credit unions can evolve their member banking experience at their pace, based on their goals. Q2 Engage is different because it uniquely supports a strategic framework to know, serve, and grow member relationships–beginning at account opening and throughout people’s lives.
Q2 Engage differentiates credit union brands in a competitive landscape, combining personalization with cutting-edge technology to redefine how credit unions connect with their members.
How does it increase member value?
Q2 Engage increases the value credit unions provide to their members by transforming digital banking into a personalized, relationship-focused engagement.
Through Q2 Engage, credit unions can leverage data to deeply understand their members’ needs and deliver tailored solutions that improve lives and build trust. This approach strengthens relationships and creates loyalty by providing meaningful engagement at critical moments.
For example, credit unions can identify members struggling financially and offer them alternative loan solutions with better terms, as seen with one of Q2’s credit union customers.
Similarly, by creating personalized landing pages with relevant financial tools, resources, and offers — like savings account tracking, educational content, or small business tools — credit unions enhance member experiences, making their services indispensable.
This dynamic personalization differentiates credit unions from competitors, helping them deliver value that extends beyond traditional banking services and aligns with members’ unique financial goals and challenges.
What differentiates this innovation from competitors?
Q2 Engage focuses on the next level of engagement. It’s no longer just about what the credit union wants to sell, but also about how well they know their members to deliver the most meaningful content, products, and services.
