IBM signs payments modernisation deal with 75 Canadian credit unions
A joint venture formed by a collection of more than 75 Canadian credit unions has signed an eight-year, multi-million-dollar digital transformation deal with IBM.
IBM claims the deal is one of the largest ever for Canadian CUs
The agreement is the largest of its kind in the Canadian credit union system, involving several different organisations across three of the country’s provinces.
The Prairie Payments Joint Venture (PPJV) features the Credit Union Centrals of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and will deploy a payments-as-a-service platform provided by IBM Services and hosted in a dedicated private cloud environment.
Delivered via IBM’s Payments Centre Canada, the new solution has been designed to meet “strict regulatory requirements for financial data transmission, security and privacy.”
“Credit unions have always been innovators,” says Michael Devlin, CEO of PPJV. “From being the first to offer debit card services, ATM banking, to mobile pay and mobile banking, we know how critical it is to move faster with our payments products and digital experience offerings.
“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.”
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The IBM platform for the prairie credit unions is expected to begin onboarding participating credit unions by autumn 2020. It will start with a single zone per region deployment model, which will then be expanded to support multi-zone regions.
“The dramatic movement we are seeing with payment modernisation is in response to the demand from Canadians for frictionless interactions, but also better privacy, security and speed,” says Dave McCann, managing partner for global business services at IBM Canada.
“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.”
The exact value of the contract has not been disclosed.
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