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Digital Banking & Core CU Solutions | CSPI: Aurora Advantage

Exceeding Digital Banking Expectations for Community Banks and Credit Unions

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Author: Emily Twillman

10 Features to Enhance Your Small Business Account Holders Online Banking Experience

10 Features to Enhance Your Small Business Owners Online Banking Experience

February 23, 2021 | Blog

It’s no secret that COVID-19 greatly impacted small businesses. Many business owners have been forced to reevaluate their strategies and trim unnecessary costs. As they assess their finances and seek new technologies and efficiencies, our team wants to share 10 features that will enhance your small business online banking experience.

 1. All Inclusive Digital Banking Platform – Offering account holders a blended platform allows digital banking users the ability to manage all of their accounts, both retail and commercial, from one platform. Yes, that means only managing only one user name and password to access all accounts!

 2. Security – Businesses can take advantage of using dual authentication methods or a hard/soft token environment to ensure secure access when creating financial transactions.  All transactions may also be configured for dual control or secondary authentication. Financial institutions will benefit from assessing risk factors based on account holder relationships by setting limits, restricting accounts and product features.

 3. Card Management – Having card management built into a mobile app empowers employers with the ability to monitor employee debit card transactions, set alerts and restrict card access.

 4. Manage Bill Payments – Providing bill payment integration in both online and mobile banking offers account holders a simplistic and engaging bill payment experience.  Account holders have the ability to easily create payees, receive eBills, schedule and manage their payments all from a single screen.

 5. ACH Origination -Business account holders will appreciate the ease and simplicity of managing vendor account payables.  ACH origination allows any business customer to create electronic payments and deposits.

What is ACH? ACH stands for Automated Clearing House, which is an electronic network that allows people or businesses to directly transfer funds between two bank accounts. Organizations that create these transactions are called Originators. As a business expressing interest in starting ACH, you would be the Originator. Transactions can either be debits or credits.

          Learn more about the benefits ACH can provide.

 6. Payroll Management – Allow commercial account holders the flexibility to manage employees and directly deposit payroll funds through online banking via ACH.

 7. Secure File Upload – Grant access for users to securely transfer files in any format to your financial institution. Have a form containing confidential information? Users can securely upload the document after logging into online banking. If your merchant is utilizing Remote Deposit Capture, users can securely upload their X937 file through online banking.

 8. NACHA – Are your commercial account holders managing payroll through Quicken or QuickBooks? Allow users secure access to upload payroll files with built in alerts verifying the file format and monitoring limit sets.

 9. EFTPS Tax Payments – Businesses can submit their Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS) payment from the online banking portal without having to access an additional website.

         What Is the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS)?

The Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS) is a service provided by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The service allows taxpayers to make tax payments either by telephone or online. This system is accessible every day of the week, 24 hours a day.

 10. Cash Concentration – Do you have a small business account receiving numerous bill payments on a reoccurring schedule? Think of a local gym collecting membership dues, a church collecting tithes or maybe a landlord managing multiple properties. Help streamline their accounts receivable by allowing them to enter their customers account information, pull funds for multiple ACH withdrawals and then enjoy a moment of relaxation while our application generates one file containing all individual payments!

Last year proved community banks and credit unions are committed to keeping the entrepreneurs dreams alive; let’s continue supporting our small business owners in 2021 by enhancing their digital experience!

Ready to learn more about cash management features for business online banking? Contact Us!

Prior Blog Posts: 

Aurora Digital Banking Transformed
Digital Banking Transformation Paradigm

 

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Partnering with the Right Technology Vendor

Digital Banking Transformation Paradigm

Digital Banking Transformation Paradigm

February 11, 2021 | Blog

As digital banking became the primary source on the front line during the 2020 pandemic, many financial institutions (FI’s) craved digital banking transformation through product enhancements or new Fintech solutions to provide relief and convenience for their account holders while their lobbies remained closed. 

According to an analysis by Novantas in August of 2020, 56% of banks said teller volumes are down by more than 31% from Q4 in 2019, while 26% of banks saw digital sales increase by more than 90%! In fact, as online banking systems were flooded with record high usage during the dispersal of the first stimulus check, many industry wide outages of online banking were reported by big players. We are happy to announce that CSPI customers experienced 98.9% uptime. Throughout 2020,  community banks and credit unions upheld their mission of serving their communities; instead of waiting out the pandemic, they recognized the opportunity to better serve their account holders and took action. These FI’s were nimble and acted quickly in effort to capitalize on their digital banking transformation.

Before we continue evaluating digital banking trends, lets ensure we understand the terminology. We’ll start by defining the original terms of internet or online banking which are sometimes improperly interchanged with digital banking.  Online banking has revolutionized our relationship with financial institutions, as account holders no longer need to visit a physical branch to manage their everyday financial transactions. Online banking enables users to process core transactions via their laptop, desktop computer, or smartphone. While online banking focuses on digitizing the “core” aspects of banking, digital banking encompasses digitizing every program and activity undertaken by financial institutions and their customers.  Digital banking involves high levels of process automation and web-based services that may include APIs enabling cross-institutional services to deliver banking products and provide transactions.

As products such as online banking continue evolving into more robust applications and processes, falling under the digital banking umbrella, the user experience is transformed. Throughout the pandemic, CSPI had the honor to assist numerous financial institutions with their digital banking transformation.  Below are a few trends our team noticed within our Aurora Online and Digital Banking platform:

•  While many believed voice banking was a product of the past, FI’s received a large influx in call volumes as account holders awaited their stimulus checks to be deposited and kept a close eye monitoring their account balances throughout 2020.

•  As the virus continued to spread, financial institutions closed lobbies and operated mostly from drive-thru facilities. Many FI’s opted to enhance their mobile banking offerings by adding modules such as mobile remote deposit (MRD). MRD not only added convenience for account holders to deposit a check from their mobile banking app utilizing their mobile device, but also aided efforts to slow the spread while protecting the FI’s team members with less physical customer interaction.

•  Another popular trend was adding bill payment modules such as eBills and person to person (P2P) transfers.  Our seamless bill pay integration allows account holders to easily create payees, schedule and manage their payments all from a single screen, and incorporates P2P transactions.

•  Incorporating card management services into mobile banking apps allowed cardholders to receive another layer of protection to prevent or quickly detect fraudulent activity by receiving custom alerts when your card is used and blocking transactions when the card is not in use.  As fraudulent activity continues to rise, account holders appreciate having control of their debit card with only a few simple taps. Our clients saw a quicker adoption rate of the card management services once integrated with our mobile app as most account holders didn’t want to manage separate apps.

The bottom line is, financial institutions that quickly pivoted their focus towards digital banking transformation were rewarded by creating stickier account relations, and drawing the consumer closer. At CSPI, our team is always focused on enhancing the account holders experience. If your FI is seeking a digital banking transformation, please contact us!  We would appreciate the opportunity to grow with you.  

5 Tips to Enhance Your Digital Banking