Can bill pay be revived at credit unions?
You may remember, perhaps a generation ago, when bill pay was revered by financial institutions because it was viewed as creating stickier members who, having inputted a dozen or two bill pay recipients, were reluctant to change FIs because of the work involved.
Bill pay lost a lot of its stick when various fintechs rolled out widgets that collected billpay data so it could be transferred to another institution.
The death blow came when many vendors – including most credit card companies – created auto pay tools where a user can choose to pay the minimum or the balance due or amounts in between automatically. That’s what I use to pay all my recurring bills and the closest I’ve come to using oldfashioned bill pay is when I’ve paid contractors with Zelle a couple times.
Cary Strange is on the show to tell how PayOnward plans to change that current practice and, hold on, know that PayOnward is a portfolio company of Black Dragon Capital which talks about PayOnward this way: “PayOnward is a cloud-native universal payments platform that empowers Community Based Financial Institutions to offer a full suite of AI driven digital payment solutions for both business and consumers through an easy to use and efficient integrated solution.”
Now know that Black Dragon Capital is a private equity firm founded by Louis Hernandez, Jr. a dozen years ago. He’s a longtime credit union tech innovator – think the DNA core system. Hernandez is not a guest on this episode but he is much referenced in it.
