In 2023, Florida Credit Union processed 282,000 payments, totaling more than $138.7 million, marking a 30.2% increase over 2022.

This success story was originally published in 2022. We’ve added the above video recapping the latest 2023 statistics to provide additional insights and updates.

Background

Florida Credit Union was established as a state-chartered credit union for teachers in 1954. Florida Credit Union is currently one of the leading credit unions in North and Central Florida and serves over 48 counties across the state. As a member-focused credit union, they strive to exceed, not just meet, the financial needs of each and every member.

Florida Credit Union established a very diverse mix of members and has grown rapidly to over $1.7 billion in assets. They have more than 131,000 members and over 116,000 loans. With this accelerated growth, Florida Credit Union quickly realized that they needed to ensure their digital payments strategy met and exceeded the expanded needs of their members. One of the strategic areas of growth has been their indirect loan portfolio, which today supports member needs both now, and into the future.

Outgrowing Their Previous Platforms

Florida Credit Union’s incumbent payments platforms supported the member volume and growth, but as the number of loans continued to increase, they realized areas of friction were introduced within the member experience. While their loans were on the incumbent payments platform, their online and mobile banking was a separate platform, requiring members to login a second time to make a loan payment. Mortgage payments were on an additional platform, requiring yet another login. Additionally, once loan payments were completed by the member, they wouldn’t post for a day or two, causing confusion for members, and resulting in increased call center demand. They realized they needed more flexibility to streamline, simplify, and continue to improve their member experience. Florida Credit Union addressed this issue by choosing to rapidly deploy one comprehensive payments platform for all loan payments: the Alacriti platform.

Selecting a New Payments Provider

Florida Credit Union was looking for major enhancements to their existing loan payments platform, as well as real-time integration with their core, so if a member made a payment it would post instantly to the core rather than taking a day or two.

In addition, Florida Credit Union wanted immediate real-time integration so the credit union would be able to pull data in and display that information to their members in real-time. With the credit union’s previous solution, they were using batch files that were updated once a day in the evening. When a loan payment was changed during the course of the day, it would have to wait to be refreshed until the next day. With Alacriti’s real-time core integration, changes to the members account are immediately reflected.

Real-time core integration wasn’t the only enhancement on Florida Credit Union’s payments wish list. They were also looking for integration with some of the other products and services that they offer their members, namely their online and mobile banking platforms. Florida Credit Union needed a solution with single sign-on so members would have a seamless experience across online and mobile banking, and mortgage payments. Orbipay EBPP provided everything that Florida Credit Union was looking for in a new platform.

Customizations

Florida Credit Union also needed some customizations to improve disaster recovery and their members’ experience. The credit union runs two different data centers, and they required a seamless transition between them, which had to be integrated with the Orbipay Platform. Additionally, custom site menu items were needed to allow users to easily transition between loan products. Alacriti was able to include these key requirements into the original project timeline.

How Alacriti’s Orbipay EBPP Helped

The Orbipay payments solution was initially rolled out to employees. There was positive feedback from the friends and family pilot, including feedback that Orbipay EBPP is “intuitive and extremely easy to use”. Employees were most impressed with being able to pay all the loans in one place. They particularly liked the integration with their digital banking platform because that was often a pain point for getting a member from one system into another. They also appreciated that credits happened on the same day. With real-time integration, a member can pay with a card and it updates the core immediately. ACH payments are posted and cleared at the end of the night with no delay. Employees and members liked being able to make updates to the system and seeing those updates immediately.

The adoption process for members has been very smooth. Matthew Teoli, VP of Delivery Channels at Florida Credit Union shared, “We’re not seeing a whole lot of member calls with questions about how to use the new system, which is a very good sign that the implementation went well.”

Florida Credit Union wanted their members to have a simplified user experience, providing them with a single access point to select different member loans—including mortgages. This simplified member experience was a huge area of success. Now, members can navigate much faster from loan to loan. As a result of switching to Orbipay EBPP, total payment volume increased by over 20%.

Teoli also valued the level of support from the Alacriti team. “I considered this to be a very successful launch. I consider all parties involved to be easy to work with. The implementation team on the Alacriti side was fantastic to work with and it was very easy to get things done. I felt they were very responsive in returning things back over to us.”

Looking Toward the Future

Florida Credit Union continues to work on further enhancing the member experience with the Alacriti platform. As an example, they are looking to allow members to make payments to their escrow accounts, as well as allowing for payment specifically to the principal after the standard payment has been submitted. It’s not enough to just have a principal option available. It’s important to make sure that people have made their regular payment first, and then make a payment against the principal.

Teoli also shared his appreciation for the customer support, configurability and Alacriti’s willingness to support Florida Credit Union’s customizations. “I appreciate the fact that Alacriti was willing to say, well, it doesn’t work that way today, but let’s look at that and let’s see if that’s something we can do.”

Conclusion

The partnership between Alacriti and Florida Credit Union is collaborative and strong. “One of the things that we have always looked for in our strategic partnerships is not only for them to allow us to bring ideas to them, but that they are investing in R&D and driving their own business’ innovation. That’s very important to our board and executive leadership team. For example, Alacriti’s Unified Money Movement Services. I am very excited to see how that comes together,” said Teoli.

In 2023, through Orbipay EBPP Alabama Credit Union processed significantly more payments. The credit union processed 185,000 payments, totaling more than $95 million—an achievement that effectively doubled its capacity compared to 2022. Additionally, the average value of transactions increased by 10% on a year-over-year basis. It also witnessed a 66% increase in the volume of skip-a-pay transactions during the same period. Furthermore, it generated $488,000 in fees, which offset some of the cost of the partnership.

This success story was originally published in 2022. We’ve added the above video recapping the latest 2023 statistics to provide additional insights and updates.

Background

Alabama Credit Union was founded in 1956 to serve The University of Alabama. They have grown to serve other groups and now have 34 locations across Alabama and North Florida and 151,000 members. Alabama Credit Union has $1.9 billion in assets and 53,639 active loans. They are known for personal service, low-cost loans, and above-average dividends on deposits.

Needing a Change

The ability to make payments with Amazon Alexa by voice and full integration with their core provider were top features of Orbipay EBPP that interested Alabama Credit Union. “A big factor that set Alacriti apart was a relationship with our core that allowed us to do a live integration. We didn’t have to do a posting file every day. That was a big differentiator that no one else had,” said Dustin Kizer, Alabama Credit Union Digital Services Director.

Alabama Credit Union’s previous EBPP solution had a very high fee structure, and there was no core integration. Also, although it had an online solution, Alabama Credit Union never fully launched it to their members because it required complete enrollment, requiring the user to create a separate login from their online banking. Recovering those logins was a burden to their members and their call center, so they shut it down. Members were only able to pay by phone. Payments were manually credited to each loan by the phone agent in order to provide immediate credit for the member and for the payment to reflect in online banking the same day. However, Alabama Credit Union would have to settle it on the backend a couple of days later. Because of this, a lot of errors were made. It was an inefficient process that they
were able to streamline with Alacriti with the live core integration

Orbipay EBPP Benefits

Alabama Credit Union also appreciated the customization capabilities and flexibility they received from the Alacriti team whenever they had an issue and needed customization. For example, Alabama Credit Union wanted to queue any failed
payment postings into a live dashboard for agents. This allowed for same day corrections for payments that needed overrides or had excessive late fees to collect. “It was very interesting that Alacriti was able to build something like that from scratch pretty quickly, which is also an example of the adaptability that we appreciate,” said Kizer.

Alabama Credit Union is happy with the level of support they receive. They hear from their customer success manager frequently, and she knows what’s on their roadmap for the next two years and makes sure things are done.

A favorite with Alabama Credit Union employees is the payment center portal. Agents posted errors, and overpayments have dramatically decreased. After a payment was made with the old system, a team member would then have to go
to the core and manually give a member provisional credit. Then three days later, the accounting team would have to reconcile. Additionally, in the past, call center agents would have to do two steps on the phone with the member. Now they just click one button, saving time and effort. The system remembers payments, so there is no longer a need to retype a card number every time—members simply confirm the CVV.

Members can make payments on their own, and guest pay is a huge benefit because payers don’t have to create a login just to make a payment. “For the members, the overall ease of use with guest pay is by far a favorite. They don’t want to have to create a login. They just want to go to the website, make a payment and leave. It also opens the door for people helping our members to make a payment on their behalf without getting access to their account or seeing confidential information. So it really solved a lot of problems,” shared Kizer. For Alabama Credit Union staff, “The biggest benefit for us was the adaptability. This was the first live integration with our core.”

Results

A very important result for Alabama Credit Union was the lift in productivity in the call center. They immediately started seeing benefits with payment processing with the launch of enrolled web and guest web. They saved 86 man-hours a week across their 50 agents.

In addition, they were able to process significantly more payments with Orbipay EBPP. In 2021, they processed 45,000 payments worth over $18 million, which was four times the amount they were able to handle in the past. They earned $169,000
in fees, which helped offset some of the cost of the partnership.

An unexpected outcome was that their first payment delinquency in indirect loans dropped dramatically. After implementing Orbipay EBPP, they realized that many of their indirect members struggled to make the first payment due to the complexity of the experience with their old system.

Members really enjoy the benefits of core integration. In the past, members would get frustrated that they would log in and didn’t see their payment, despite Alabama Credit Union advertising a cut-off time in which members could expect to see their payment post. This was another reason they went to phone payments. As a result of not seeing the payments immediately, a lot of people would call and cancel payments. It was a huge improvement for members to have a seamless experience and be able to utilize the single sign-on enrolled web. They can make a payment, and when they click on their account, they see it’s already in their history. The immediate gratification made a big difference in the member experience.

Alabama Credit Union launched skip-a-pay in August 2021, a feature that allows members to skip a payment for a fee. Previously, they only offered skip-a-pay around the holiday, and it was an entirely manual process. A member would visit a branch and sign a form, and the loan officer would make the due date change and collect the fee from their checking account. 2021 was the first year where members could use their debit card and skip-a-payment regardless of the time of year in their mobile banking experience. Alabama Credit Union was able to process under 1,200 skip-apay requests, earning $39,000 in additional fee income

Looking Toward the Future

In 2022, Alabama Credit Union has strategic communications planned with Pay by Text, a feature that allows members to make payments via SMS text messages. The goal is to ensure that their outbound communication is actionable whenever
a member receives a text message, allowing them to make a payment or ask a question. The solution makes the payment through Pay by Text or initiates a Glia interaction where Alabama Credit Union can help the member answer a question. The partnership solution between Alacriti and Glia enables financial institutions to leverage Alacriti’s payments-focused AI chatbot, Ella, within Glia’s digital Customer Service platform to help members navigate the digital payments experience. The solution allows the member to continue the same conversation over all channels without having to repeat themselves or re-enter information. Reps can also cobrowse and guide members through their session. “For 2022, we said, let’s make surethat we have a unified messaging platform for every way that members can do business with us,” said Kizer. They expect even more relief in their call center, which receives a spike in calls when balance alert texts deploy.

Enables both Orbipay Payments Hub and EBPP (Loan Payments) for a real-time member experience

Background

Veridian Credit Union was founded in 1934 as John Deere Community Credit Union. They expanded to become a community credit union in 1986. They are a non-profit financial cooperative owned by members and governed by a volunteer Board of Directors. With $7B in assets and 320,000 members, Veridian serves all 50 states digitally, with over 30 branches in Iowa and Nebraska, and plans to expand into the Minnesota market.

Striving for Innovation

Veridian wanted to be able to offer real-time posting of payments to their loan pay experience. In addition, their business clients were interested in real-time payments to be able to better serve their customers.

Veridian strives to offer a wide range of innovative payment products. They try to understand the needs of their business partners, and what they do for them trickles down to their regular membership. As a part of that strategy, Veridian chose Alacriti for both Orbipay EBPP (loan payments) and Orbipay Payments Hub (connection to real-time payments and other rails).

EBPP – Real-Time Modern Loan Payments

Veridian already had a product for loan payments but found that Alacriti’s product was better. Because of the API connection, they did not need file transfers to make sure they got the correct member information. “We decided to go with EBPP because of what it offers us—the real-time posting of payments. When our members are calling and making one-off payments, they’ll be able to post in the moment, see those funds posted instantly to their loans, and not have to wait 2-3 business days they’re normally waiting to see those funds on their loan accounts here at their credit union,” said Colin Eagan, Real-Time Payment Administrator at Veridian Credit Union.

“As for the platform itself, everything looks the same. Whether it’s the RTP® network, the FedNow® Service, or EBPP, the platform we’re working on is the same. So it’s just the ease of use over multiple platforms for multiple payments,” said Amy Faley, Manager of ACH and Faster Payments at Veridian Credit Union. “We decided to work with Alacriti over the other vendors due to speed to market. That was huge—the fact that it was something they built themselves and knew inside and out was really big to us because just about every other vendor we looked at was developed from a legacy system. We felt like what they were saying they could back up—so it was an easy decision. We wanted to get there fast, we wanted to get there efficiently, and we wanted to work with a partner that had our same values.”

Payments Hub – Real-Time Payments

Veridian’s business partners were the primary reason they looked for a real-time payment solution. They had a few different partners that they originate for on a large scale and found the need through their clients for faster payments, which drove them to look at vendors that provide this service. Their business partners actually approached Veridian because they had heard about real-time payments solutions and wanted to offer them to their clients.

Veridian wanted all their payments on one hub so everything would be in one place—including analytics. “What we found when we were vetting out service providers for the real-time payment service is that Alacriti was quick to market and showed many efficiencies on how to get there, and that’s really what edged them out,” said Faley.

Through Alacriti’s Orbipay Payments Hub, Veridian was able to be amongst one of the first credit unions connected to the FedNow Service. Alacriti and Veridian were both pilot participants in the FedNow program, which involved attending meetings and joint sessions throughout 2022. Veridian decided to implement the FedNow Service around the same time that they were looking at real-time payments with TCH. Since the two networks aren’t interoperable, they saw connecting to both networks as being the best benefit for their members.

Benefits and Use Cases

Benefits
Veridian is on the Receive side for real-time payments, and they have received quite a few real-time payment transactions, and that continues to grow. The benefits Veridian cites for being with Alacriti include the ability to have the same platform for multiple payment channels, the ease of pulling analytics, and the ability to add innovative services (even if Alacriti doesn’t already offer that specific service). An example of this is virtual account numbers. Alacriti is working on creating that service for them, but it’s not part of their standard offering.

Veridian’s members also see the benefits. They have access to innovative products and the ease to send money as fast as they want without having to think about it. “They pick a date to transfer money, and if they wanted it to be today, it’s possible. And if they’re okay with it getting there in a few days, then they can go through the regular ACH channel. But for our members, they won’t know the difference. They’ll just be making a payment, and they’ll be picking a date to send it. For our business clients, it comes down to offering a full range of services to make sure all their client’s needs are met. We want to be able to offer all of these products for these clients so they don’t have to go to different financial institutions to piece together things that their clients need,” Faley explained.

With all of the payment data in one place, reporting is much easier. “As the Real-Time Payment Administrator, I’ll be able to go in and view all these payments and have all the access to reporting in one area versus having to log into multiple different accounts. So, it’s really an all-in-one solution and something that’s been a benefit for us. The benefit for our members is they’re essentially going to receive their money faster and be able to ultimately send their money faster to where they want it to go. Today, there are people waiting multiple days for settlement to come in for various accounts, depending on where the funds are flowing in for them. So these solutions will allow our members to not only send their money faster but know that they’re sending it securely across networks so they know that their money is getting from point A to point B and the quickest way possible, which is going to benefit them and our business partners in the long run,” said Eagan.

Veridian plans on seeing a return on investment when their business partners Send and Receive on the real-time payments rail. “That’s when these payment rails will really be utilized a lot, and we’ll see those transactions flowing through, especially with our connection to their EBPP solution. The solution is going to enable our members to have payments post to their loans in the moment. They’ll see the benefit and then know Veridian as a financial institution that they can trust, one that they can go to knowing whether their payments are posted as quickly and efficiently as possible,” Eagan shared.

Use Cases
Veridian has internal use cases for using real-time payments for their mortgage funding. Rather than receiving a large check when closing on a mortgage, members can have that funded instantly to the account it needs to go to. In addition, Veridian does a lot with indirect lending, where they work with various dealerships to service loans at the credit union. Rather than sending traditional clunky checks through the mail, Veridian will be able to fund these instantly through that process. They are also doing other things that are helping on the member side, such as sending dividends to wherever members want them at various financial institutions—funding their online membership applications. It cuts down on wait time and the time spent by members after they’ve submitted a payment and wondering when it’s going to come out of one account and post on the other.

How Alacriti Stands Out

“The biggest surprise working with a vendor is when you find a company that is so responsive. We’d expect that during the testing and implementation, but even after that, now that we’re live with RTP, now that we’re live with EBPP, they are just as responsive as they were when we were testing. So to have a vendor that’s just very on top of it and very willing and able to make customizations—it’s just really surprising in how fast they always get back to us, regardless of what’s going on and regardless of how big or how small the issue is,” said Faley.

“Alacriti blew us out of the water with what they were able to do for us. Verdian doesn’t like to take a lot of payment solutions from any third party that we partner with out of the box. We asked for a lot of modifications, a lot of different things to service our use cases on our end. And Alacriti was ultimately able to provide that for us. They actually own and built their system so they’re able to make the customizations that we want on there, and ultimately gear it exactly how we wanted it to function, which is what ultimately why we decided to go with Alacriti,” added Eagan.

Alacriti integrated with Veridian’s existing core banking system. “Again, I’ll just have to tip my cap to Alacriti on that one. They did almost all of the work in getting connected to our core system. Veridian was there for support and able to answer any questions, but they did the majority of the lifting getting connected. It was a very simple process that took almost no time, and with them getting connected, and us up and running,” said Eagan.

“The biggest benefit that Veridian has received from partnering with Alacriti is being one of the first financial institutions that’s going to be connected to these networks. It’s always a race to be competitive, to have access to the newest forms of technology, the newest payment rails—the newest everything. And it moves so fast, especially in banking and in the payment world. Being able to get connected to that network outside of just what they provide for us on a technical level is just their commitment to making sure that the relationship here with Veridian is a solid relationship that’s going to continue into the future. It feels like we’ve all been together on this as one big team. So just having that experience on their team and just their attention to detail and their development and engineering team is second to none. They’re able to stand products up for us very quickly, and you can tell that they have a vast experience in this area, and it’s definitely something that has been a benefit for Veridian,” Eagan shared.

Veridian has been up and running with TCH’s RTP network for over a year and is among the first credit unions to connect to the FedNow Service. Veridian is also looking at moving Fedwire and Visa Direct to Alacriti so they can have multiple payments on the same platform. The goal is to have all their different payment rails run through Alacriti’s payments hub.

As a medium-sized credit union, being the first in line to connect to these rails not only puts Veridian in a better position but also their members and business clients as they move into the future. “I would absolutely recommend Alacriti to any financial institution that is looking to enter this payment space. Their support and development team are second to none. They’ll work with you and how your specific financial institution works and be able to work with any use case that you come to them with. They are very diverse in how they can operate amongst different payment rails, amongst different systems, and different cores out there. They are able to handle it all,” Eagan concluded.

Greater Nevada Credit Union received feedback from their members that they really wanted to be able to pay their loans from a financial institution outside of GNCU. Members could only call in to make payments from another financial institution, overburdening the call center and causing more friction in the loan payment experience than necessary. To meet member expectations, GNCU started researching new, more modern payment experiences for their members.

Read the success story to learn how Alacriti’s Orbipay EBPP allowed Greater Nevada Credit Union to offer more payment channels and the ability to use another financial institution’s counter debit card to make a payment.

A major health insurer that is both a leader in selling health insurance in two midwestern states and a mutual insurance company, needed to find an electronic billing and payment vendor quickly. After evaluatinging several vendors, the insurer selected Alacriti’s B2B solution, Orbipay Electronic Billing Presentment and Payment (EBPP). They were impressed with Alacriti’s ability to make customized modifications quickly and at no additional cost.

Learn how the health insurer experienced high digital bill pay adoption rates and improved customer satisfaction after introducing Orbipay EBPP to their policyholders.

A major health insurer had multiple, disparate membership systems, plus received lots of payments by check. The only digital payments they were able to offer were via a cumbersome bank draft process. As a result of many technical issues and business constraints, the insurer undertook a five-year migration effort to consolidate disparate membership systems, while adding members from each migration to Orbipay EBPP.

Learn how Orbipay EBPP enabled the client to offer autopay and card-based payments while streamlining processes to reduce manual intervention.

As Technology Credit Union’s member base began to grow and the landscape changed, their previous loan payment platform no longer met their needs. To uphold the credit union’s mission to deliver a member experience that wows, educates, and empowers members to succeed financially, Tech CU knew it was time to find a new solution quickly.

Learn why Tech CU chose Orbipay EBPP and the benefits its members, indirect loan
customers and staff experienced as a result.

System Innovators (SI) provides an on-premise Enterprise Revenue Management (ERM) system for over the counter payments and wanted to extend this functionality to online payment channels.

Recently, the municipalities SI serves adopted hosted solutions and were looking for a feature-rich ERM platform that resides in the cloud. To achieve their objective to offer a cloud solution with best in class security, SI decided to solicit help from a trusted third-party vendor, Alacriti

Learn how Alacriti’s AWS Cloud Consulting team was able to help them by migrating their product to AWS and
building the services necessary for them to be successful.

Alacriti implements several security applications to collect compliance checks and many of the processes involved were manual. As Alacriti grew, gathering this information independently became a time-consuming ordeal.

As a result, Alacriti made the decision to leverage its own consulting business, Alacriti Consulting, to implement AWS Security Hub in 2019. AWS Security Hub gave Alacriti a comprehensive view of all their high-priority security alerts and security posture across their whole AWS account.

SheSpeaks provides a platform for their members to voice their opinions on many issues and products in the industry, as well as publish content that consumers/retailers require to make informed discussions. Without the implementation of proper insight, security, and infrastructure, SheSpeaks was challenged in executing their core business—getting the message out.

Making the move to AWS allowed SheSpeaks to become more agile and innovative, eliminating a high capital expenditure model that was not efficient.

About SheSpeaks

SheSpeaks is an award-winning influencer marketing and media company. Through their proprietary influencer platform, they provide clients with on-demand insights, influencer content, content amplification & distribution reaching hundreds of millions of shoppers. To learn more about SheSpeaks, please visit www.shespeaks.com

Tracir wanted to deliver a digitally enriched bill payment experience to accommodate the diverse needs of its customers. The company’s previous solution was unable to offer the diversity and configurability needed to meet rapidly changing customer expectations and payment preferences.

Orbipay EBPP helped Tracir offload costly credit card payments by transitioning to ACH and debit card payments. It now gives customers more control over how and when they make payments by delivering a custom, personalized user experience.

About Tracir Financial Services

Tracir Financial Services, Inc. has 20+ years of experience in the auto finance industry. Tracir’s core service of indirect automobile financing is built upon a commonsense approach to lending, delivering reliable credit decisions that benefit both businesses and consumers alike. To learn more about Tracir, please visit www.tracirfinancial.com

High call volume, inconvenient payment options, and significant operational costs are just some of the challenges that prompted Horizon Credit Union to select an electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) solution. Horizon’s previous solution didn’t offer an online payment option for its members and indirect loan customers, meaning most payments were made via phone calls and paper checks.

Orbipay EBPP was ultimately selected for its ability to reduce costs, free up staff, provide a self-directed option for making digital payments, and reduce the volume of mailed payments.

Learn how Horizon Credit Union cut the cost of payments acceptance and turned it into an income producer with Orbipay EBPP.

About Horizon Credit Union

Horizon is a member-owned, not-for-profit financial institution that operates 20 branches in three states. The Credit Union serves anyone who lives and works in the state of Washington, plus select counties in Idaho and Montana. To learn more about Horizon, please visit www.hzcu.org