As any retail banker will tell you, there is a lot going on with debit cards. In the age of everything digital, this stalwart payment device is still very much front and center in consumers’ minds as their go-to transaction type for everyday transactions. Ensuring the continued relevancy, competitiveness and safety of debit is key to retaining and keeping cardholders. Debit cards, when compared to other electronic forms of payments is the most frequently used payment type. Debit cards are a frequent, nearly daily reminder of the user’s relationship with their primary financial institution.
Debit is certainly a mature product at this point having been around for over 20 years old. But it is interestingly playing an important role in new payment types as well. Push payments like Mastercard Send and Visa Direct rely on debit cards to facilitate Person to Person (P2P) payments and Business to Consumer (B2C) disbursements. So the current frequency of use of debit cards and debit’s role in emerging payments is why debit cards are worth of our attention.
To assist its membership with their debit card strategies, CO-OP Financial Services in partnership with Mastercard commissioned Mercator Advisory Group to conduct a survey of credit union executives with responsibility and deep knowledge of their respective debit business to gather responses to questions regarding the performance of their card portfolio, but also provide background on strategically important questions about how fraud is approached, how debit is integrated within digital transformation strategies, how debit marketing is approached for the best results and related topics. There were over 240 credit union executives that responded to the survey questions, making it the largest survey of its kind. The responses are reflective of the credit union experience throughout the U.S. and from a broad spectrum of institution asset sizes. The results have been summarized in a report: Optimizing Debit Cards for Cardholder and Credit Union Success.
The objectives of the survey and the accompanying report analysis are threefold:
- Provide readers with benchmark data that can be used to compare their own debit card portfolio metrics and understand how their debit cards performance is positioned among a market of peers. This includes for markers such as debit card to checking account penetration, activation percentage of centrally issued cards, usage statistics, prevalence of certain fraud types, percentage of instant issuance, engagement with card controls and other areas of interest.
- Secondly, the report provides tactical advice for consideration to achieve certain benchmarks for those credit unions that are achieving a different result in their own portfolio.
- And finally, the report highlights the collective wisdom of the survey respondents regarding trends that are or will factor into debit’s future. It’s good perspective on what to prepare for next.
The report and data is organized around five primary topics including a broad overview of the U.S. debit market, debit card acquisition, debit card marketing, debit cards and digital banking strategies, and perspectives on managing debit card fraud.
There is an upcoming webinar discussing the survey and report contents, plus an opportunity to receive a full copy of the study. Those interested can Register Here.
