"That's the concept behind it," Werner said. "I came from commercial banking, and we had all those same storage systems that we put all the files in, good old big file rooms. We thought of, what if you just … literally like a huge filing system, but that it would support the weight of people. It's literally just built on compressed storage systems, is the concept behind it, but just a much larger version of it."

For now, the system isn't built to exist outdoors. The idea is to put it inside a building, such as at an employer's headquarters or in a mall, effectively creating a collapsible satellite branch.

"If the credit union has a very strong relationship with the business partner, they can go in and say, 'By the way, we have the ultimate bank-at-work program because we will put a small facility inside of your lobby,' or some other space with inside of their own buildings," Werner explained.

"For us — banking, credit unions — it's all about real estate. It's where you're located," he added. The "cool factor" of the cube system can also help credit unions send a brand message about innovation to members and prospective members, Werner said.

In what he called the credit union's "innovation garage," Ardent spent about a year conceptualizing and working on the idea, as well as incorporating ADA accessibility, OSHA regulations, fire suppression and other factors.

"Once we actually built it, or when we were building it, we're like, 'Maybe this is something we can get a patent on.' We did get in touch with a patent attorney, and sent all the diagrams, all the architectural drawings. He said it would fall under what's called a modular commercial structure. That's what the patent is for," he explained.

Ardent, which has $701 million in assets and about 35,000 members, received the patent back in October. Now the credit union is turning its sights toward marketing the system.

"We're still working with a company to really solidify what the marketing plan is going to be for the cube," he said.

"I think we will certainly do whatever we can from a PR perspective," he added. "We will put it up for Branch Design of the Year. We'll try to get maybe some press releases on those types of things. I don't see us having a booth at the GAC where we're selling these things, but we think it is so unique and fills a really missing void in the branch structure that we do think it does have a great opportunity going forward."