Summary:
In this special episode of COMMERCE NOW, we dive into the 25 year partnership Diebold Nixdorf has with America First Credit Union. Manish Choudhary the Sr. Vice President, Software for DN talks about how important connected commerce remains for banks and credit Unions.

Related Content: 

https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/en-us/banking/portfolio/software/payments

Transcription:

Mike:           Welcome to our show and on today's program, we have Manish Choudhary from Diebold Nixdorf, Manish, How are you?

Manish:           Very good. Thanks Mike, for having me here.

Mike:           Oh my gosh. You're very welcome. We're talking today about your partnership with America First Credit Union, and Diebold Nixdorf, and just to kind of get a lay of the land here. Can you tell us about your partnership with America first and what you guys are doing?

Manish:           Absolutely. Mike, so as you know, Diebold Nixdorf, is a global technology company enabling connected commerce for banks and retailers across the globe. Serving top a hundred financial institutions, top retailers. America First is a federal credit union with almost 81 years old institution with 128 location. It has the eighth largest credit assets in the US. It's the sixth largest credit union with almost a million and one members. Diebold Nixdorf and our partnership with America First is a 25 year old partnership where we recently announced our payment software, which will drive the payment transactions and payments switching capabilities with America First. 

Mike:        Wow.  You guys have been with them for 25 years. Oh my gosh. That's quite a relationship. Well, I mean, that's congratulations right there for sure

Mike:           So let's get back to the software part of it. So how does the software, how does this work for America First? How does it benefit them?

Manish:            Yeah, so think about, I think if I were to double click on the payment conversation, so payment industry, as you know, is getting disrupted, it's getting disrupted because of new cloud technologies. It's getting disrupted because there are new real-time payment types, new contemporary payment types, which are evolving. There is innovation in speed of deployment, speed of consumption in the payment platforms and binding payment, which we've been working on is absolutely the right answer. And I'll tell you why it is probably one of the most contemporary payments, software implements payment, new payment types at speed and scale faster than anywhere else. It is a API first pure cloud native architecture. It is one of the most secure enterprise payment software available with scalable microservices. So from the credit union's perspective, it actually future proof, the technology and as the consumer behaviors are changing the credit unions as the, the consumers of the credit unions are looking for more and more new contemporary ways of doing transactions. This actually addresses today's needs, but it also addresses the future needs for America First and how the customers are going to consume some of the new payment technologies. 

Mike:           I mean, as you well know, I mean, it changes by the second. I mean, by the time this interview is done, something major will have happened in the payment space. So it's got tp be  future-proof is such a key, key aspect of technology today.

Manish:           Yeah, you're right. If you think about, you know, by the time we started talking and now there are millions and millions of new digital payments, which got processed and the banks really wanted a scalable infrastructure to actually handle those peaks and loads and balances.

Mike:           So, so how is this going to help America First, obviously, obviously they're planning for the future. They're planning, they're being flexible. How else does it help them, you know, obviously be more attractive to members and, and whatnot.

Manish:           Absolutely. So if you think about, as I mentioned, the, the consumer expectations are changing. We believe credit unions are competing with the large banks, and they're also competing with the tech coming in from mobile wallets and, you know, E transactions and others. So we at Diebold Nixdorf believe we really want to be at the right intersection of how to provide the right experience to our customers, to have them provide that experience to their customers. And in some ways, and I do believe like any other industry, the competition in credit unions that extremely high consumers switch between credit unions or banks and their, their experiences are changing. We believe the, the new payment platform really provides them. So for example, doing cardless transactions or non card based transactions, or enabling instant loans and instant payments in future or access to modern payment types,, you know, and I believe if the credit unions do not provide that somebody else will.

Manish:           So in some ways we believe that this whole payment platform and future proofing, the technology opens up all of those avenues. So while it opens up the avenues for payment, it also seamlessly extends the traditional capabilities on the ATM side. So for example, America First is, is going to use the personalized marketing campaign to serve its customers, the seamless security, which is connected to the platform on the ATM side, also comes along with it. You can walk to a ATM and without the card, you can actually do transactions by using video technology. So there's a lot of enabling technologies and options that you get created with this new platform.

Mike:           I'm liking the, what was the, the video technology with the ATM. And you can actually, how does that work?

Manish:      Yeah, so the, the, the other part of our software is the modernizing the entire ATM stack. And we call them as digital value added services. So I, you know, I usually walk to an ATM and sometimes I have my debit card and sometimes I leave it at home. I can actually walk in, press a button, talk to a teller, verify my identity, do transactions and transactions and not just deposit and withdrawals. I can E-Verify. I can possibly look at opening up an account or doing some mortgage applications, right. With the channel. Then I'm able to talk to somebody or even a better example. I would say, Mike is if you're in New York city and you have you own 10 restaurants at the end of the day, you really want to get all the cash deposited into your ATM account, without giving passwords, pin numbers and account numbers. To those 10 employees, you can actually set it up on your mobile phone, give a QR code. And the 10 people can actually deposit all of the money and they can withdraw next day morning. And they're going back to open up the restaurant. So it's just enabling these small and medium businesses and the new use cases as self-service and digitization is becoming more and more common, especially after the pandemic. 

Mike:           I was just about to ask you, have you, is this all a result? I mean, this was stuff was going to happen anyway, but it really sounds like everything was accelerated because of the pandemic, all these really cool digital offerings out there right now.

Manish:           Absolutely. Absolutely. We are seeing it globally. One of the advantage we have is, you know, the fact that you operate in a hundred countries, we can assemble the use cases and our learnings or what we are seeing. So pandemic definitely shifted. So the recent lockdowns banks migrated close to 70% of their deposits from teller to self service. And out of those 70%, almost 50% of those that actually aggregate get ATM's. Now that's a huge shift. That's a huge shift, which wouldn't have been possible. So this acceleration of digital transformation at credit unions and ATM, and I think we are at the right intersection and the technology is really, really helping in terms of accelerating those things. 

Mike:           And getting back to America First, and this is what America First is taking advantage of right now, right? So this is what they're going to be doing.

Manish:           Absolutely. I think we are really, really excited about the implementation and our teams are jointly working together. As we think about getting the lining payments, modernizing the payment infrastructure, modernizing the ATM and enabling a lot more capabilities for future like cash recycling. You know, we're extremely excited about the opportunities, which a self-serve integrated platform is able to provide you

Mike:           Good stuff, man. Any, any, anything else to wrap up? Because this is a very timely conversation obviously, and a lot of credit lines are going through this right now. Maybe not to the extent of that America First is, but I'm hoping that they will, you know, a lot of them are, a lot of them are on their digital journeys. Let's just put it that way. And, and a lot of them accelerated their digital journeys last year, but it sounds like really America First is really taking advantage of the technology out there to be not only attractive to their members, but to really, you know, compete with the big folks too.

Manish:           Right. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think the only thing I would add to wrap up is I think, you know, we are extremely excited about this partnership. You know, we believe our, our teams, you know, my, my ambition is to really, really creating the most sophisticated payments software stack in the industry and writing payments is absolutely the right product, the right enterprise software, exactly the right time. Cloud-native scalable, faster to deploy faster, to consume back lines, enabling new payment types and security. You put all that power together in the right appropriate time and digital transactions really, really blooming. So excited about the partnership, excited about the dividing payments and what we've we're doing. So thank you for the opportunity. 

Mike:           Oh my gosh, anytime. This is exciting stuff for credit unions out there and you guys are right there at the front of it and helping create things. So we appreciate it, man. Thank you so much. Appreciate the time.