CO-OP Financial Services said this week it has bought a stake in Finivation, a New York City software developer with a long history in the credit union space.

The California-based CO-OP said Finivation already is heavily involved in developing new products for the big CUSO and that its investment as a minority owner will help Finivation founder/CEO Brian Bodell expand his firm's resources and product development.

Bodell made his mark with middleware pioneer qbt Software – sold to Corillian in 2005 – and now heads an operation that focuses on integrated Web and mobile application development and authentication solutions.

“Developing digital payment channels is essential in today's market. With Finivation, we can continue to leverage our own technology to rapidly innovate to serve credit unions,” CO-OP President/CEO Stan Hollen said in this week's announcement.

“Finivation is deeply committed to the needs of the credit union movement as it already counts many large credit unions as clients and through its work with the CUNA Technology Council,” he said.

That work includes the development of Credit Union Financial Exchange, or CUFX, an open standard for systems integration in the credit union ecosystem.

“CO-OP has long established payments standards for financial transactions switching and settlement in both ATM/POS and shared branching. CO-OP has embraced and intends to fully support CUFX for information exchange,” the CUSO said in its announcement.

Bodell said, “We have worked essentially as an internal partner in conjunction with CO-OP's highly innovative product development team, so welcoming CO-OP into our ownership is a natural extension of the existing relationship.”