Considering the state of the payments industry and the importance of payments to your credit union’s business model and revenue goals, you need a modern payments strategy that supports today’s industry-wide threats and opportunities.
There are two distinct approaches to developing that strategy. The proactive, offensive strategy leaves little to chance with dynamic, detailed plans that are rich in what-if scenarios and regularly updated with data-driven insights. The reactive, defensive strategy takes a “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” approach.
Credit unions that rely on defensive strategies create self-inflicted disadvantages and material performance and operational risks. And those with offensive strategies now have an array of complex considerations that didn’t exist a few short years ago.
Whether your team is proactive or reactive, here are 11 big questions to carefully consider when developing your payments strategy.
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- How are you going to compete aggressively and successfully, near- and long-term?
- Is banking-as-a-service (BaaS) your friend or foe?
- Are you open to open banking?
- Are you supporting the incredible demand for real-time payments?
- Is SMB banking important to your performance and growth?
- Do you have a near- and long-term digital currency plan?
- Are you confident in your payments fraud strategy and solutions?
- What’s your plan to comply with ever-increasing regulatory requirements?
- Do you have a payments data strategy?
- Is your marketing budget sufficient, and are the results worth the investment?
- Are your payments channels future-ready?
Successfully competing near- and long-term in this new world inundated with threats and opportunities requires an offensive strategy that will enable you to:
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- Consistently leverage innovations and technologies that are practical solutions to legitimate needs and not just shiny new objects.
- Proactively understand and respond to industry-wide disruption with highly competitive, modern payments solutions.
- Capitalize on new growth-driving, revenue-diversifying opportunities inherent in new payments channels, types, and use cases.
- Identify and engage proven, high-touch, collaborative payments partners.
The impact of payments on your business and bottom line is undeniable. Considering payments are the most common money moments and part of everyday life for consumers and businesses, there is no end in sight for disruptive and opportunistic innovation. If you don’t invest the time and resources to modernize your payments platform and keep it in a future-ready state, you’ll need an alternative strategy — one to replace the revenue impact from lost payments.
Jack Henry™ is committed to simplifying the complexity of payments and helping diverse credit unions develop modern, highly scalable, highly competitive payments platforms that support all payments channels and types.
