MADISON, Wis.—The Filene Research Institute has launched its newest Center of Excellence: All Things Payments.
According to Filene, the Center is a dedicated payments research initiative built exclusively for credit unions to understand emerging trends in payments and money movement. The Center will deliver actionable payments research, competitive benchmarking tools, strategic guidance and implementation roadmaps tailored for credit unions, Filene said.
‘Stakes Never Higher’
“The stakes for credit unions have never been higher. Emerging payments technologies create new opportunities while also putting pressure on credit union deposit strategies and interchange revenue,” Filene said in introducing the new center. “Amazon and Walmart are exploring launching stablecoins that could financially impact credit union’s bottom line.OpenAI’s Instant Checkout with PayPal will allow users to buy in a single, streamlined ChatGPT experience. AI-powered fraud is accelerating faster than defenses can keep up.”
“No single credit union can solve the payments puzzle on their own,” Filene CEO Mark Meyer said in a statement. “The All Things Payments Center brings together the industry’s best thinking: academic rigor, practitioner insight, and collaborative problem-solving to help credit unions not just survive these disruptions but lead through them.”
From Confusion to Clarity
According to Filene, the All Things Payments Center “cuts through the noise with unbiased CU-guided research that will help credit unions look forward to navigate competition and technological tradeoffs to build a payments roadmap that will meet the evolving expectations of their members.”
Filene said the Center will examine critical questions, including:
- Where does a credit union stand competitively in payments and what should it prioritize?
- Which payment innovations (tokenization, stablecoins, etc.) will impact members?
- What do members actually expect from their payments experience and how does the credit union deliver it?
A Lot of Shift
“A lot is shifting in payments right now, and it can feel like the ground keeps moving,” ] Dr. Henry Kim, Fellow for the Center for All Things Payments, said in a statement. “We’ll help credit unions sort signal from noise and turn things like real-time payments, stablecoins, fraud detection, and AI into practical next steps so they can serve members even better.”
The Sponsors
The founding sponsors of the new Center include Corporate America Credit Union, Corporate Central Credit Union, Desert Financial Credit Union, EastRise Credit Union, WSECU, SchoolsFirst FCU, Municipal Credit Union and Lake Michigan Credit Union.
