ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – There's more to the name change at Payment Systems for Credit Unions than meets the eye. PSCU Financial Services, the former Payment Systems for Credit Unions, detailed the changes in its business operations that dictated the organization change its name to reflect its broader scope. PSCU officials recently laid out changes in seven different areas that, they said, made the name change appropriate. "We were PSCU for a little more than 25 years," said Brian Crawford, chief marketing officer for PSCU Financial Services and "and that reflected our work as primarily a card services organization." PSCU had been with a former processor that used the Telecredit platform before switching over to First Data, its current processor, he said. Crawford traced the roots of the move to PSCU Financial Services to about 12 years ago when the organization began to offer a "complete data solution" for the newly arriving signature debit cards, which on one hand process very much like credit cards and yet still give consumers an opportunity to use a Personal Identification Number (PIN) at the point of sale. Servicing signature debit cards in both sorts of transactions was the first addition to PSCU's array of services, Crawford said. From there the services have expanded, although many of them remain primarily card related, Crawford said, pointing to PSCU Financial Services' partnership with National City Bank to buy the credit card portfolios for which PSCU still provides customer service and support. This relationship is fairly well known, but fewer people may be aware that the organization has begun an advisory and consulting arm to enable credit unions to better evaluate their card performance or that it has begun to offer comprehensive portfolio management, including collections and underwriting, he explained. Previously, when a credit union that processed with First Data signed on with PSCU it retained the underwriting and collections responsibilities for its cards, Crawford said. But under PSCU Financial Services, if a credit union chooses, the organization can handle the portfolio's collection burden as well as be able to move a credit union member who might have a basic card to a platinum or gold card. As part of this effort PSCU Financial Services will offer some telemarketing as well. The information or consulting services that PSCU offers credit unions that want to improve their card portfolio penetration or performance is also a relatively new area. This is a comprehensive consulting evaluation that is "sister activity" to the arrangement recently announced with Raddon Financial Group, but it is not the same thing. Raddon's CEO Card Analysis will focus on the database advantages that Raddon brings, Crawford said, but the fee based advisory service will include marketing and other areas as well. But all these are still primarily card related and could have been grouped under the old name. The really new things are the group's entrance into the bill paying and executive education markets. The organization has partnered with CheckFree to provide credit unions the ability to offer their members the chance to pay their credit card bills online and pay many other bills online as well. About 220 credit unions have signed up to give their members a chance to pay their card bills online, and roughly half signed on to offer their members bill paying services through the PSCU-CheckFree partnership, according to David Serlo, PSCU's president/CEO. "We sort of tipped our hand when we consolidated our operations into two service centers," Serlo said, noting that had to be done to support the expanding number of products and services. Serlo pointed to PSCU Financial Services' strategic plan that called for the organization to get almost a third of its income from new products and services and explicitly refers to the organization's work as "financial services." Serlo said that the electronic bill payment partnership with CheckFree gave PSCU an opportunity to serve credit unions that do not process their cards through First Data and or even necessarily offer cards at all. Serlo said he was particularly excited about PSCU University, a service through which the organization will be able to offer credit union executives courses in areas in which it already has expertise. The next offering would be strategic planning, Serlo said, and future offerings would be planned in card portfolio decision-making and other areas. Serlo acknowledged that PSCU would be going up against some long-standing institutions, like the Credit Union Executive Society (CUES), which offers executive education, but Serlo said that PSCU would be seeking to fill "particular niches" where its expertise is strong. [email protected]