By: Cody Banks, SVP, Product Enablement and Growth 

One of the most frequent questions we have received from clients about Velera’s integration centers on the future of our product offerings. As we recently communicated to our clients, Velera has launched our new product journey to modernize our products and solutions to meet the rapidly evolving needs of credit unions and your members. But unlike a static product roadmap, our product journey is a dynamic strategy that adapts to market trends and client needs—one that we must continuously develop to ensure we modernize and develop the products that accelerate growth and deliver meaningful and impactful experiences. 

As we build this payments ecosystem, we are taking great care to ensure that we build it with our clients, not for them. Collaboration is not just something we do—it’s part of our DNA. Some of these collaboration efforts have come through Advisory Councils, Co-Creation Collectives, user groups and regular client interaction. Most recently, we have engaged a Product Modernization Focus Group, in which participants are actively providing valuable insights and guidance focused on the integration impact.

Key Outcomes: Driving the Product Journey Forward

Through our collaboration efforts and client feedback, we have identified key areas of focus that will drive our product journey forward. These areas are designed not only to modernize our offerings, but also to enhance the overall experience for our clients and their members. We looked at several dimensions—market trends, technology, client impact, speed to market and adaptability. From this analysis, we have centered our approach on four main outcomes:

1. Deliver Connected Experiences: Deliver experiences that are both connected and personalized, meeting consumers exactly where they are digitally, whether it’s via online checkout, at a brick-and-mortar location or walking into a branch. 
2. Protect Your Members and Credit Union: It is crucial to protect our clients—and, by extension, their members—against the ever-present threat of fraud. We focus on identifying, protecting against, recovering from and resolving the various fraud trends we see.
3. Optimize Your Operations: We aim to streamline operations by reducing manual processes, making it easier to serve members, whether they visit a branch or call in for support.
4. Grow Your Portfolio and Membership: A key challenge for our clients is staying relevant in a competitive market. We are committed to not only growing account balances, but also expanding membership across different demographics, ages and generations, ensuring that our clients can effectively compete with the big banks down the street.

Underlying all these outcomes is a focus on leveraging data to drive exceptional experiences, detect and address fraud more quickly and elevate portfolio growth through targeted campaigns and promotions.

Bringing the Journey to Life

However, our focus is not just on launching the best products; it’s about fully understanding, articulating and collaborating on the value these solutions provide. Our goal is to work with our clients to identify what gives them an edge in the checkout process or the broader payments ecosystem. By partnering closely with them, we strive to demonstrate how our solutions can create impactful, meaningful experiences for both our clients and their members.

To that end, we are actively focusing on several key initiatives. A significant demand we’ve observed is the need to enhance business card solutions, particularly in supporting small business owners—the backbone of the economy. It’s crucial that small business owners manage essential tasks like paying employees, tagging purchases and processing invoices, while ensuring that their end products are supported throughout the entire ecosystem. Whether it’s launching Zelle for small businesses or leveraging our partnerships with Juniper Payments for instant payments, supporting business owners remains a major focus for us.

Another cornerstone of our strategy is democratizing payments. We are committed to meeting members wherever they are in the checkout process. This includes implementing innovative features such as digital issuance, instant payments through our JuniFunds payments hub or Buy Now, Pay Later options. Additionally, for those who prefer in-branch services, we’ve introduced enhancements to our extensive Shared Branch and ATM networks, ensuring a seamless experience for all our members.

Since announcing the combination, we have wasted no time in bringing new products to market—something I discussed in a recent episode of VeleraTV. We currently have over 180 projects in flight, each aimed at advancing and connecting the member experience. Our commitment to continuous improvement ensures that new enhancements and innovations are regularly introduced, allowing us to better serve the evolving needs of our clients and their members.

In some ways, our product journey may resemble a more traditional “product roadmap,” but our outlook is much different. It’s called a journey for a reason. This journey toward product modernization is not just about keeping up with trends and technology—although that is important—it’s about continuous collaboration and innovation, ultimately paving the way for our clients in this new era of financial services. 

Cody Banks leads Velera’s product experience and delivery teams, ensuring strategic investments, innovation and commercialization with the end user in mind. In his role, Cody focuses on developing and delivering secure, easy and convenient payment experiences for the company’s credit unions. Prior to joining Velera in 2017, Cody spent nearly 10 years in the credit union industry navigating complex initiatives with a focus on enhancing the member experience.