A group of more than 75 Canadian credit unions have inked an eight-year, multi-million dollar deal with IBM for a digital payments overhaul.
Credit Unions from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba provinces have established a Prairie Payments Joint Venture (PPJV) to lead a payments modernisation effort in line with their customers' migration away from cash.
A Payments-as-a-Service platform will be developed and managed by IBM Services and hosted in a dedicated, private cloud environment on Big Blue's public cloud. Onboarding will begin later this year.
IBM says the credit unions will use the platform to drive innovation and new product offerings, and to ensure they can comply with evolving regulatory requirements at a lower investment. The platform will also enable the integration of key third party fintech partners.
Michael Devlin, CEO, PPJV, says: "Changes are happening across the payments industry, such as open banking, and companies outside the financial sector entering the market with new credit cards and cryptocurrencies.
"All these changes promise a new era of transparency, but also increased privacy and security challenges. To keep pace, the need for payments modernization for credit unions has never been greater."
Dave McCann, managing partner, global business services, IBM Canada, adds: "By hosting its payments platform in the cloud, we will ultimately enable onboarded credit unions the flexibility to rapidly innovate new digital member experiences for businesses and members across all payment types in a more efficient, safe and resilient manner."