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As credit unions prepare for the implementation of EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) technology, there is a lot of information to sort through. Rebekah Higgins, Assistant Vice President for Synergent Card Services, helps credit unions prioritize how they can best prepare for the changes ahead, with this advice:
• Fraud prevention is a priority
• Review fraud settings, especially those associated with Internet and card-not-present transactions such as Verified by Visa and MasterCard Secure Code, to determine there are settings in place to ensure that cardholders enroll in this service; and that out-of-wallet data is used for cardholder authentication in order to make fraudulent enrollment more difficult
• Educate members on how to determine which information requests are fraudulent to combat the potential for an increase in PIN-based fraud
She encourages credit unions to keep staff up-to-date on developments. “We will continue to host webinars and will also be sending updates and information,” she said. “In addition, we are working on creating some additional tools for credit unions, such as blogs and/or web interviews, that credit unions will have access to at any time.”
Speaking of cards…It’s a good time to look at a strategy to increase interchange income. Doug MacDonald, Manager of Direct Marketing Services, says that target marketing can be a key component into the success of a credit unions card program. “Data mining can be a strong component in increasing product penetration,” he said. “We’ve been seeing exciting results for credit unions through data mining – it has made a real difference in helping credit unions overcome advertising obstacles and bring in loans. These tactics can easily be applied to innovative credit card or rewards program promotion,” he said.
