CSCU Releases White Paper On The ‘Mobile Pays Environment for Credit Unions’
TAMPA, Fla.–CSCU has published its latest thought leadership brief. Titled “The Mobile Pays Environment for Credit Unions,” it is designed to provide a means to understand the varying features of the mobile wallets and to give an overall picture of their position in the marketplace, the CUSO said.
“Credit unions are scurrying to keep up with the seemingly ever-changing landscape so they can develop and adopt digital strategies that allow them to keep their payment products in the game,” said Tom Davis, CSCU senior vice president, finance & technology. “They are asking themselves, should I get my own branded mobile wallet or should I just ensure that my brand is in all the pays?”
CSCU said the brief intends to help credit unions make sense of the many elements to consider when analyzing the various mobile wallet alternatives and uses several differentiating factors to compare 11 of the most popular mobile pays. The factors used are device requirements, communication, acceptance, security, active/passive, in-app purchasing, loyalty and incentives. This information is discussed and carefully outlined in an easy-to-understand matrix.
“Understanding the differentiations will allow us to understand the various mobile wallets and how they stack up to other alternatives in the marketplace today,” said Davis. “Even those mobile wallets that are yet to come.”
CSCU noted that one additional factor outlined in the paper is the revenue impact of mobile pays. These costs, the brief explains, can come in the form of transaction fees, tokenization fees, mobile wallet enablement fees, or in the case of Apple Pay, reduced interchange. Other revenue impacts come in the form of steering of transactions away from higher revenue products to lower revenue products.
The brief recommends that a credit union’s digital strategy should include determination of which, if any, of the mobile wallets to participate in. Ultimately, the decision is based on many factors: perception of high tech, defensive strategy to protect card usage and associated interchange, keeping cardholder satisfaction high by being in all the possible wallets being demanded, costs to be in wallets, and in the case of white-label wallets, branding decisions.
For info:www.cscu.net/whitepapers.