CU Tomorrow

The new commute

June 13, 2008 – 6:30 am

The Filene Research Institute received some fancy new Trabian-designed Web digs, which are now live over at www.filene.org.

What this means for you, the loyal reader of CU Tomorrow (and especially RSS subscribers) is that all new posts will land at http://filene.org/home/blog/cutomorrow, and not at this site. I hope you’ll change your life accordingly.

We’ll leave this site up for several weeks, but this will be the last post here, after which we’ll simply begin to redirect traffic directly to the redesigned Filene page.

Also, look for regular guest posts at the new site from our intrepid 30 Under 30 innovators. Good times, ahead!

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Hosed at work?

June 5, 2008 – 11:20 am

Younger employees don’t dig hosiery … one Kansas credit union makes an incremental change.

What do you think: mandatory or optional hose at work?

(And the shredder photo is awesome …)

Posted in youth trends | 4 Comments »

Contactless tech: A chicken or egg dilemma

June 4, 2008 – 4:21 pm

The good folks at PSCU were handing out samples of Mastercard’s PayPass card at a conference in April. Not one to pass up $25 free dollars, I took one with the promise to try it out. That was Friday, April 18.

As I understand it, contactless technology uses RFID rather than the traditional magnetic stripe to share your payment information. While slightly faster than the traditional card slide, the real benefit comes because you don’t have to sign anything. As illustrated by the Visa graphic below, you tap … and go.

I wanted to try it out, I really did. I carried that PayPass card in my money clip and kept my eyes peeled for a place to tap. I remembered hearing something about 7-Eleven supporting the card, so I stopped there with visions of whisking through, albeit for half a tank. No luck: I used my regular card. I stopped into Target, which I consider a tech-forward retailer. No dice: plain-old mag-stripe. And if the 7-Eleven gas pump and Target couldn’t provide, you can bet I wasn’t tapping at the local Kuhn’s grocery store.

The first time I found a chance to tap my card was at an airport McDonald’s … on May 8. That’s almost three weeks after the newfangled card landed in my clip. And that’s where the story changes. After ordering my usual fare of apple pies and a milk shake, I tapped just once. I heard a pleasant beep, waited about four seconds, then received the food and a receipt from the cahsier. No signature, no hassle. I did the same thing with two Slurpees on May 24 (apparently the tap-and-go equipment is inside the 7-Elevens). It was easy; I was pleased.

I can imagine Minnie Merchant and Izzie Card Issuer having this exchange ad infinitum:

ICI: I’m not going to start pushing contactless cards until my customers can actually use them.

MM: I’m not going to put in the equipment until your folks are carrying the cards.

That’s the problem. For me personally contactless is very nice, but not game changing. I’m not going to go out of my way to carry RFID when I still have to go out of my way to use it.

So I’m with Izzie on this one. Until I can tap for a Root Beer at a vending machine, for my fare at the parking meter, or at a gas pump next to my car, I’m sticking with the boring and universal mag stripe.

Posted in credit card, debit, innovation | 3 Comments »

Credit unions, air freshener, and beer

June 2, 2008 – 5:22 pm

What does Febreze have to do with credit unions? It all clicked when I read a story in today’s WSJ: Consumer Products Getting a Makeover.

The moral of this password-protected story is: Most of Procter & Gamble’s household products live in a cabinet > If a product lives in the cabinet you won’t see or use it as often as you might, and your friends won’t see it either > By making the packaging of products like Febreze and Dawn sleek and attractive, consumers are more likely to leave them out in the open and use them more often (think about the move to snazzy designs on Kleenex boxes).

So where do credit unions come in? The key quote:

Historically, most household staples competed on performance, but today, “there are quite a few categories where product superiority claims are either hard to establish or just aren’t very meaningful to consumers anymore because there’s not much difference,” says Jerry Kathman, chief executive of LPK, a brand-design agency.

Substitute “household staples” for “savings accounts” or “financial institutions” and you see what’s going on. And that’s where design kicks in.

The financial services market, like the household products aisle at Safeway, is a crowded place. At Procter & Gamble a 1% uptick in sales can lead to an extra $765 million, and design helps grab that 1%. At your credit union a 1% rise in young adult membership can mean loan business for years to come, and design helps grab that 1%.

Bad design is easy to find in credit union Web sites, so it’s unfair to call anybody out. But here are some of my favorites from the good column:

• Amplify: I love this Texas credit union for a lot of reasons (see the MoneyTracker post), but they also do a great job keeping a clean interface and dynamic graphics.
• Utah Community: As a BYU grad, I’m a little partial to this credit union already, but their Web site gets top billing for simplicity and easy navigation. I recommend them even though they turned the undergraduate version of me down for a car loan.
• FedFinancial: Here’s a small credit union that isn’t waiting until it gets big to streamline its look.
• Verity: Stands to reason that a blogging credit union would set aside some cash for a clean, colorful homepage. And who could miss the 6.75% checking offer?
• Coors: I don’t even drink but boy do those debit cards look cool.

And, just so you know I don’t have many original thoughts, here’s an instructive design post from Open Source CU way back in the day.

Posted in debit, innovation, online services, social media, youth marketing | 3 Comments »

For scooting credit unions

May 28, 2008 – 12:27 pm

Update: CU Times reports that $23 million Evergreen CU in Wisconsin has done 75 scooter loans in just two months. Not too shabby.

That’s my idea of a cool scooter. But even if you’re just buying a boring old Vespa, scooters are hot again, at least for the city set with a manageable commute.

Net Banker’s got the story on how the gas crunch could mean burgeoning credit union business in non-traditional lines, like scooters. Sure, the profits, even on a $7,000 (!) Piaggio will be minimal, and it’s still a niche market, but the local newspaper would call you to get the story, it would make for a great starter loan for young adults, and the places that sell scooters often sell larger bikes too. A partnership with the dealer could lead to a larger line of business.

Posted in lending, youth trends | 3 Comments »