Fintech News: Innovation, Loyalty, Network Monitoring, E-Docs & Voice Banking

Some recent financial technology announcements that could impact credit unions include a new innovation network, a loyalty partnership, a network-monitoring alliance, and a credit union-based e-documents and transactional voice banking solution. 

The CFPB, working in partnership with multiple state regulators, launched the American Consumer Financial Innovation Network to enhance coordination among federal and state regulators to facilitate financial innovation.

The Bureau said it invited all state regulators to join ACFIN. The initial members of ACFIN include the attorneys general of Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah.

The CFPB explained that ACFIN enhances shared objectives, such as competition, consumer access, and financial inclusion. Additionally, ACFIN promotes regulatory certainty for innovators, benefiting the U.S. economy and consumers alike. The network also seeks to keep pace with market innovations and help ensure they are free from fraud, discrimination and deceptive practices.

“Federal and state coordination promotes consistency in the regulation of consumer financial products and services while facilitating consumer-beneficial innovation,” CFPB Director Kathleen L. Kraninger said. “ACFIN will provide a platform for federal and state regulators to coordinate with each other as they develop new rules of the road and apply existing ones.”

San Francisco-based myGini, a fintech provider for banking and retail sectors, announced it has integrated with financial data network Plaid. The integration enables financial institutions using the myGini mobile platform to offer customers unique loyalty experiences on a range of purchasing options, including PIN debit payments.

Plaid authenticates cardholder accounts via online banking credentials rather than account and routing numbers. The company now connects to 15,000 financial institutions in the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

The myGini loyalty engine provides artificial intelligence-driven management for financial institutions, delivering personalized rewards to cardholders via instant notifications on the white-label mobile app. Leveraging the capabilities of Plaid, the pool of rewards is now available for PIN debit payments, which is aimed at helping credit unions and banks seeking to add incremental value to even the simplest of transactions and retain customer loyalty.

“The integration enables myGini to see PIN debit transactions linked to checking accounts without touching banks’ processors. This is a major roadblock for many financial institutions in the U.S. looking to launch innovative services,” Mehmet Sezgin, myGini CEO and founder, explained. “The integration with Plaid clearly demonstrates our commitment to proactively empowering financial institutions and merchants to create rewarding payment experiences for all.” 

Buffalo, N.Y.-based Garland Technology, a provider of network test access point and packet broker solutions, announced it completed a technology solution with Columbia, Md.-based Tenable, Inc., the Cyber Exposure company.

The new solution enables access to network traffic through passive scanning and active monitoring capabilities from Tenable to provide mutual customers with holistic visibility into their environments. The integration leverages Garland Technology’s EdgeSafe Bypass Network TAPs and Tenable’s Nessus Network Monitor, the company’s passive network monitoring solution. For a more robust enterprise approach, Nessus Network Monitor also connects to Garland’s PackMAX Advanced Aggregator and Bypass TAP. 

“When securing your network, obtaining useful data to reduce vulnerabilities is the epicenter of an infrastructure,” Chis Bihary, CEO & Co-founder at Garland Technology, said. “Together with Tenable, we can collect data for optimal visibility and continuous monitoring through encrypted traffic.” Ray Komar, vice president of technology integrations, Tenable, said, “Our growing Cyber Exposure ecosystem provides an open and flexible platform that makes it easy to build integrated solutions that solve complete customer problems.”  

eDOC Innovations, a CUSO based in Middlebury, Vt., recently added four more credit unions to their growing eDOCSignature users. eDOC , which provides mobile enterprise digital transaction management and e-commerce software for credit unions. The recent signings add to the 51 others who have signed on in 2019 and help the CUSO surpass its initial milestone of 200 credit unions using eDOCSignature. 

Introduced in 2016, eDOCSignature facilitates the execution of transactions through a secure, remote document process. eDOC CEO Mark Fierro, said: “The need for e-sign technology is vast in the industry and becoming a mainstream solution for the secure delivery and execution of digital documents. We are extremely proud of what we have accomplished so far in providing solutions that our credit union owners and peers need and want. Providing these solutions has helped cement our relationships with current clients, while attracting and adding new ones. We are committed to assist the industry by providing conveniences that will attract and retain technology-minded members.”

The Tampa, Fla.-based Best Innovation Group, an innovation catalyst and strategic consulting partner focused on strengthening and growing credit unions, and Chelsea, Mich.-based Mahalo Banking, a digital banking platform provider will work with its partner credit unions for implementation of the transactional voice banking solution, which currently supports voice applications for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

Both organizations place a strong focus on using technology to improve the member experience for credit unions. “BIG and Mahalo share an appreciation for, and commitment to, the credit union movement and the way it gives back to its members and the community,” BIG CEO John Best said. “We see the rising potential and vision of voice and AI banking. The ability to create a custom solution through FIVE with the Mahalo API for our partner credit unions continues to enhance our ‘Omni-Experience’.” Denny Howell, Mahalo co-founder and SVP of experience, said, “This partnership adds another great feature to Mahalo’s portfolio and overall goal for all credit unions, regardless of size, to compete with and surpass banks.”