Three Ways to Maintain Payments Continuity at Your Credit Union

This post was inspired by our webinar, “Payments Continuity for Credit Unions.” Watch it here.

COVID-19 is changing the way credit unions interact with members. Face-to-face interactions, which have been a defining feature of many credit unions when compared to conglomerate banks, have lost their potency in a time of social distancing, stay at home orders and work from home dynamics. 

In particular, many traditional loan repayment processes have been thrown into disarray. Things taken for granted, such as in-person payments or exchanging cash over the counter, have suddenly become legitimate challenges. 

Here are a few ways PayNearMe can help solve a variety of payment challenges faced by credit unions today. 

Challenge: Onsite Collections

Accepting loan repayments in person is no longer feasible in the short term. This has created challenges for members that have traditionally paid their monthly bills with cash, money orders or certified checks. Continuing to offer these payments puts your members and staff at risk, and creates the potential for more disruption of operations. 

PayNearMe’s Solution: Digitize Your Payments

There’s now a way to offer digital payment options for all your members, regardless of their tender type preferences. PayNearMe allows repayments through ACH, debit cards, Apple Pay and even cash.

Members who usually pay in-person with cash can simply go to any participating location (including 7-Eleven and CVS Pharmacy stores), scan a barcode and make a cash payment. Cash payments through our network are guaranteed and irreversible, preventing the need for your credit union to accept money orders or certified checks. 

By digitizing all your loan repayment options, you avoid the risks of face-to-face interactions and allow distant members to pay from their homes or neighborhoods.

Challenge: Supporting Remote Call Center Employees

In order to continue operations, many credit unions have turned to remote work to keep employees safe. Unfortunately, in many cases this has been done so quickly that proper training, IT setup and processes haven’t been fully rolled out. This has created significant barriers to collecting payments in a safe and compliant environment. 

PayNearMe’s Solution: A Secure Web-Based Portal

PayNearMe’s Agent Interface enables your work from home call center agents to be more productive and secure anywhere they choose to work. 

Our award-winning technology makes it easy to search customer accounts and initiate one-time and recurring payments in a few clicks. A fully customizable interface gives your credit union complete control over what agents see, allowing you to give only the information needed to keep your payment infrastructure secure.

We also offer tools such as push to text and IVR to avoid taking card numbers over the phone, keeping transactions PCI-compliant and lowering the risk of a data security breach. 

Agent Interface gives your call center employees everything they need to successfully do their jobs from home. 

Challenge: Meeting Increased Customer Service Demands

Most credit unions are dealing with extremely elevated customer service demands. Between answering COVID-19 related issues, answering questions about repayment options, and simply working with customers in times of need, this excess demand makes it difficult to conduct common business tasks—like taking payments.

PayNearMe’s Solution: Promoting Self-Service Payments for Members

Give your members more ways to pay by opening up convenient self-service channels for them. Automatic payments are an easy way to allow members to turn on a consistent recurring payment schedule that requires no action after the initial setup.

For customers that prefer to pay monthly, services such as IVR, digital wallets, text to pay and web-enabled payments are easy ways to access your payment portal on any device.

These solutions help to alleviate call center and email volume, giving your staff more bandwidth to handle pressing customer service needs.

See It for Yourself

Want to see how PayNearMe can help your credit union collect every payment, every time? Schedule a demo today, or view a 15-minute recorded demo to see our platform in action.