By Robert McGarvey

 BNPL.  Remember that because you soon will be using that abbreviation often.

It stands for Buy Now, Pay Later and it is just about the hottest trend in payments at retail.

Today’s US market is small, maybe $50 billion but forecasts show the BNPL market crashing into the many hundreds of billions of dollars by the middle of the present decade.  And then the numbers start to get dizzily huge.

Why so much interest?  Oldtimers will recall that BNPL was a staple of 1950s retail but as credit cards proliferated it receded into the background.  But now it is again hot and that’s because it speaks to the purchasing needs and desires of Gen Z and young Millennials.  Why don’t they just slap down a Visa card and put it on credit? The advantage of BNPL to them is that they know the total cost of purchase when they make it.  The full payments amount, spread out over an agreed upon number of months, is there to see.

Pay the minimum on a credit card purchase and suddenly the total amount paid can vault much, much higher.

So the younger generations are hopping aboard BNPL which, right now, is largely used for consumer purchases of a few hundred dollars to maybe a few thousand.

Right now it’s mainly fintechs that are playing hard in this space.

But Scottsdale AZ based equipifi is a fintech that wants to enable credit unions in particular along with some banks to play in this space.

In this podcast with co-founder and CEO Bryce Deeney you will hear about equipifi’s secret sauce which is software that can approve and fund a BNPL loan at retail in under a minute.

No application is required. No FICO score is checked.

The basis for the loan is knowledge of the history of the member’s checking (sharedraft) account and insight into how much surplus money generally is in the account.  So that’s a solid basis for forecasting that this consumer can in fact handle this monthly payment.

In the podcast Deeney tells in detail exactly how equipifi works along with how it is integrated into the core.

Any credit union that wants more members under, say, thirty years of age needs to listen and take notes.  

Keep listening and you will hear the equipifi has plans to roll out a BNPL service for SMBs too.  How cool is that?

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

by Robert McGarvey

 Be bold.

That is the loud message from Cameron Madill, CEO of PixelSpoke, an Oregon headquartered marketing agency that primarily serves credit unions.  He also hosts “The Remarkable Credit Union” podcast.  

Too many credit unions simply want to fit in, he says.  

Dare to be different and that just may get you noticed.

That’s just one take-away from this podcast – there are many more.

Want to know if your website is good? Madill tells us the main way credit union websites go bad. Use it as a checklist to judge your own.

Do you do member testing of your site? You probably will want to after listening to ths podcas because Madill tells the enormous benefits of testing with even a handful of members.

He also tells why credit unions need to embrace storytelling in their marketing, a topic he has written about for CUInsight.  

Buckle up because he also tells why PixelSpoke is a worker owned cooperative and why it is a certified B Corp. The latter is a credentialing program that designated businesses that put greater emphasis on purpose, not just profit.

As for worker owned cooperatives. that’s a comparatively small slice of the cooperative pie in the US but it also is fast growing. Hear why PixelSpoke now is owned by its workers.  

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

by Robert McGarvey

We know boo about Omicron – not how deadly it is, not how effective our vaccines are in warding it off, not how widespread it already is in the United States and globally. But there is one thing we do know: lots of new travel restrictions are coming, lots of travel gateways are erecting tall barriers to entry, and lots of meetings and events – which had been edging into in-person events – will be reverting to virtual.

Wishful thinking may want to deny everything in that last sentence but wishful thinking isn’t reality. We saw the reaction to delta earlier this year and we will see a rerun now, maybe with even more restrictions, especially if Omicron jumps the vaccine-booster barriers.

Know this: I am planning a trip to Portugal and Spain in this coming fall. I am reasonably confident it will happen in 10 months. But I am also very confident – indeed more confident – that the next three to six months are going to be full of chaos because of Omicron and the new variants that are likely soon to follow.

Just assume meetings and events that had been scheduled for the next three months will be virtual. It is hard to see many organizations encouraging employees to travel to in-person events and they won’t.

That’s just the beginning of the changes. Now New Year’s Eve celebrations have been canceled in the Algarve, The UK is requiring everyone to show a Covid test on arrival – that includes us, the Irish, the fully vaccinated. In the Netherlands, facemasks are now required in lots of places, from hairdressers to restaurants and bars and of course public transit. In Germany vaccinations are about to become compulsory, despite a vocal anti vax minority. In Spain support is growing for requiring a digital vaccination certificate to gain entry to many public places such as restaurants.

That last is a good idea, by the way. In the US we should require proof of full vaccination status (and very soon boosters too) to gain entry to restaurants, supermarkets, and, yes, airports. So far the political will to do this via Executive Order is lacking in the White House but that may change if the pressures grow on hospital capacity and deaths begin to mount again. Both seem very possible – hospitals already are strained in much of the country – including Vermont which once had been a poster child for doing the right things regarding Covid.

Of course the Biden Administration already has imposed a new 24 hour rule for tests required of all incoming international travelers including US citizens who are fully vaccinated. Many say that is sharply reducing the readiness of US citizens to travel abroad and probably that is true. In reality the requirement may not be that huge a hurdle. When returning from Spain in October I had to produce a test result that was no more than 72 hours old upon takeoff and that was no big deal. Madrid Airport has a very good testing facility – my test was around 100 Euros – and I think mine was within 26 hours of takeoff. I could easily tweak my timing and do it inside 24 hours – and, word of advice, definitely book an appointment in advance and pre-pay. At least in Madrid there was a long line of those who showed up without appointments and tests are administered to that group on an as available basis. Those with appointments were ushered in.

When will this end? Nobody knows, obviously.

But a guess is that we need to get the world up to maybe 75% vaccinated. Best guesses are that it will take at least five more months to get the global fully vaccinated near there.

For something like normalcy to return we also need wide distribution of booster shots. Maybe 10% of us in the US have had a booster. That number needs to ramp up much higher, soon.

We also need to return to cautious conduct – mask wearing, crowd avoidance, etc. Stop whining, it’s keeping us safer.

You thought all this was behind us? Who didn’t? But here we are again and I am not expecting much improvements for many months to come. Improvement will come, when we have taken the steps needed to get there. Until then it will be one step forward, two back. So keep your travel bags unpacked. I know I am.

By Robert McGarvey 1

You probably know names like Flippa, FE International, Dealasite, and Sedo — they’re marketplaces where owners of online businesses list them for sale. With a few clicks you can buy an online business. It’s that easy!

Continued at StartUpSavant

Read about success stories, the downside risks, and how much it costs to play in this emerging marketplace.

by Robert McGarvey

Maybe it is a cockamamie pie in the sky of a dreamer’s idea.

Or maybe it is a key to showing the future relevance and importance of credit unions.

Focus on the target: solidifying the credit union reputation as the welcoming place for the presently unbanked – about 6% of us – and the underbanked, another 19% of us.  That is one in four Americans who are ignored, wholly or in part, by traditional financial institutions.

USAlliance, a $2 billion credit union that has grown out of the legacy IBM employees credit union, wants to change that. And the vehicle is Bank Dora, a branchless neo-bank powered by an app (find it in Google Play and the Apple App Store). Or sign up here.

Continued at CUInsight

By Robert McGarvey

It is tiresome – so many press releases and executive interviews spewed out by airlines and big hotel chains prognosticating that business travel will return to 2019 “normality” in 2022, probably by mid year.

These predictions are to fact based estimates as manure is to meatballs.

And I really like a good Italian American meatball (with the trinity of meats, please).

But I am no fan of fake news releases and Panglossian interviews.

Or fact free forecasts by business travel fanboys. You know who they are. Because they like travel they fervently believe everybody does. But it ain’t so.

Interlude: this blog has no comments on omicron because I have nothing useful to say other than the sooner the world gets vaccinated, the better.

Back to the present musings:

Now Google has weighed in and where data is concerned, Google is the motherlode.

That has always been the company’s business plan.  Hoover up every scrap of data, sort it, and draw fact based conclusions.  Google knows you are interested in travel to the Maldives over Christmas because you searched for exactly that 10 times this week. When Google talks it has data to back it up.

Here is Google’s prediction: Per Travel Weekly UK, “The decline in the volume of business travellers may continue beyond the pandemic, Google’s latest travel data suggests.”

Google’s Meg Elzea, global travel industry manager, added that while a majority of business travelers will be back on the road in 2022, companies and travelers are in fact “making changes.”  

Like what?  Per Travel Weekly, “She told Abta’s Travel Trends conference that Google expects business travel to return in the next year to ‘70% of pre-pandemic levels’.”

That sounds exactly on target to me.

Roughly one-third of pre-pandemic travel is not coming back and it isn’t because we have concluded t isn’t necessary and companies have decided they can save that money.

Even some air execs agree. For instance, Loganair boss Jonathan Hinkles speaking at the Airlines 2021 Conference,, said: “We are looking at a much lower level of business travel. The market will be smaller overall.  

He elaborated: “We’ve all moved on to Zoom or Teams and a proportion of that is going to stick.”

“He acknowledged that a certain amount of business will still have to be done in person, but maintained that ‘a proportion of the services sector is not going to revert back to the [business travel] ethos it had.’”

Personally, while I think the virtual meeting technology – Zoom and similar video calling tools – will erase some meetings, I think bigger factors are in play.

For me, at least, Zoom seems to be replacing oldfashioned phone calls and, frankly, I prefer the latter and often stick with a phone without video.  Why comb one’s hair when one has no need? But that is what Zoom is replacing: phone calls.

As for what is driving the reduction in meetings, I agree with Google’s research that pinpoints three triggers:  the global outcry over climate issues – and air travel is a prime offender, an employee search for better work life balance, and a corporate bean counter hunt for cost savings.

That’s a perfect storm that, I believe, will sideline just about that 30% of travel Google sees getting trimmed.

Many employees will be happier (substantial business travel is a factor in ill health as well as significant family issues in many households).  The CFOs (and Wall Street profit counters) will be overjoyed. And the planet will be in better shape if we cut back on travel.

What trips are not on the chopping block?  I see sales calls and customer service calls returning to normal when the present health issues vanish and a lot of the complicated and ever changing travel requirements (such as PCR tests) are simplified, or at the least regularized.  A world of fast changing rules is a world where we stay home.

But the day travel gets simplified will come, possibly in mid to late 2022.

What travel will be eliminated?

The kinds of trips that will be sidelined are the intramural, getting to know you get together, small meetings (often in Chicago or Dallas for big national companies).  

Oh, do I remember them,some from as far back as 1976 and were they tedious and pointless!  They doubtless still are.  Erase them from the calendar and nobody will cry.

The organization can also put out press releases – true ones – about decreased carbon load. And there can be whispers to Wall Street and investors about profit gains.  

Nope, that one-third of travel will be forever lost. And no one will much miss it.

by Robert McGarvey

What you don’t know about digital marketing can be your undoing. That is 2021 fact.

For some years credit union c-suite occupants have shrugged off digital marketing – it’s just for kids, our members skew old.  Maybe that was true (maybe it wasn’t as true as the c-suiters believed) but what now has become indisputable in our pandemic era is that digital is here and it has become a significant part of just about every life.

That includes credit union members.

Where’s a credit union to get started in digital marketing? That’s what you will hear about in this podcast with Amber Callahan, VP of marketing at 1st Advantage FCU in Virginia, and Kristin Harrison, director of business development at Web Strategies, also in Virginia.

They have had a multi-year journey together and you will learn how to get started in digital marketing and how to go to next, higher levels.

Do note: this is pretty much a tech free podcast.  There’s no need to have a techie at your side for this one.

And accept the reality: we have entered the zone where tech is what matters. To quote the New York Times about Google and Facebook: “these tech companies are rich and powerful because they are the biggest sellers of advertising in the world.”

Digital already accounts for more than half of global ad spend.  Many billions of dollars get spent on digital advertising.  There are good reasons for that. You will hear about that in this podcast.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

by Robert McGarvey

 If you had asked me ten years ago what the future was for corporate credit unions I probably would have said: they have one?

There were reasons for cynicism: You remember Wescorp, right? There are links in the show notes if you need memory refreshing.

But – and this is a huge but – there are literally thousands of small credit unions that needed and still need a corporate credit union to provide crucial assistance in a range of functions, from payments (especially contemporary ultra fast money movement) to short term liquidity.

I covered the corporate credit union beat for a few years at Credit Union Times and, while I cannot say the sector every thrilled me, little by little I grew to see corporates as essential in today’s credit union universe.  Were the credit union sector to shrink down to a few hundred behemoths corporates likely would vanish.

But in a world with 5000+ credit unions, many minuscule, the need for corporates remains.

Have they modernized? Are they part of 21st century financial services or are they more of a curio shop of dusty processes and tools?

Today you hear the answer.

That’s because in this podcast you will hear from Eric Dotson, EVP at fintech Aptys, and Jaime Agonstino, Vizo’s Director of Marketing and Business Development.  

Vizo is the product of a merger of Mid-Atlantic Corporate Credit Union and First Carolina Corporate Credit Union.

Aptys enters this picture because it was tasked with modernizing Vizo’s payments technology, which had been something of a rat’s nest of tangled threads from the two merged in partners.  The tools just would not suffice in what is becoming a realtime payments world, Vizo knew it, and so it brought in Aptys to produce something new, bigger, better.

It was a multi-year process. Hear the details here.

Along the way you will also hear mention that some other corporates – Alloya and Catalyst – are doing similar with their payments. 

The message is plain: corporate credit unions are making changes to seek to stay relevant.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

by Robert McGarvey

First comes golf, lots of it. Good Scotch. Some travel. Lots of TV … and then what? 

The surprising answer is that for many retirees, their answer is to work. Maybe more surprisingly still, lots of them turn to self-employment and that means a startup. That’s proven by numbers from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which show that the fastest growing age cohort in the workforce is 75 and older, and self-employment is chosen by more who are 65+ than by any other age cohort.

Around one in every six of those who are 65+ are self-employed. The next highest group, by the way, are those 55-64 where 9% are self-employed, per BLS.

Why? The reasons are as varied as are seniors, but a fact that comes through loud and clear is that the US is at the very beginning of a silver tsunami where retired seniors declare “not me,” and work again. Some do it for the money while others do it for fun. Still, others seek to solve a need they are passionate to address.

Here are there stories.

Continued at Startup Savant

by Robert McGarvey

Admit it, there is something fundamentally pedestrian about collecting cashback rewards on credit cards. Sure, I remember, sort of, the odd $20, or was or $30?, that I got for using my Venmo credit card where the user can get 3% back on the primary spending category

On Discover, so far this year I have gotten $86, mainly with 5% back rewards and, yes, I had to check the account website. I knew I had gotten some money from Discover but had no real idea how much or little.

But I still remember, quite clearly, when a business associate cashed in enough American Airlines miles to claim a free trip to Egypt and of course the pyramids. That was in the early 1980s – he obviously was an early mileage savant – and I remember it all vividly. I also remember when a neighbor who studied the OAG cashed in miles for a free trip to Yugoslavia for himself and his girl friend in the early 1990s.

Color me envious.

What did I do with my Discover cash back? Huh? I have no idea. It just went into paying the next Discover bill.

But today I discovered a new and exciting credit card reward. Read on to find out what.

Nope, I am not advocating a full throttle return to a pursuit of airline miles. Regular readers of JoeSentMe know airline mileage is a treacherous game where the dealer sets all the rules and the rules do change. As far back as 2017 the belief has spread that airlines in fact make more money selling miles (mainly to big financial institutions) than they do seats. The math gets complicated and the disclosures are not full but the undisputed reality is that the system is flooded with miles that can be earned buying cat food and redeemed for flights. That system is not advantageous to any looking for free flights.

Airline miles are a kind of 21st century manifestation of Gresham’s law.

And, yes, I do remember I recently bought two roundrip comfort economy tix on Delta to Spain with miles. There remains availability. But that cost me 240,000 Amex Rewards miles plus a little cash. I am glad to save the money but can’t say I am thrilled with the exchange rate.

Fact is, I just am not thrilled or enthused about the pursuit of miles. Yes, I will toggle an Amex Offer if it brings me more miles for doing little or nothing. But I am not going to play the miles game, not in 2021. When airlines cease to publish an awards chart – as some now do – the pursuit becomes akin to searching for a black cat in a darkened room while wearing a blindfold.

If I have a pile of Amex miles and it’s easy to burn ’em buying a ticket I will.

But the thrill indeed is gone.

I scarcely track my United and AA miles anymore, in part because I have earned zero new miles from them in the past year. Boring.

What does give me thrills is that now I can collect Venmo rewards in Bitcoin. How cool is that?

For some time – years really – I have mulled plunging into Bitcoin but have kept my wallet zipped. Now Venmo has offered me a painless way to pay in Bitcoin and since, in my mind, the money is free, I have no anxieties about speculating in novel currencies.

If I decide crypto is too flaky, I can switch back to cash rewards on Venmo in a few clicks.

There are a half dozen more cards that now offer crypto as rewards. The list is here.

I used the Venmo card not necessarily because I am insisting it is the best but because it already was in my wallet and inside a minute of tapping around in the app I had it set up to pay my rewards in Bitcoin. Sometimes I like low barriers to entry and this was such a case.

For me the thrill in rewards just may be returning as now I get to join the bipolar excitement of the Bitcoin price rise and fall – even if my stake is a tiny fraction of one Bitcoin. Mightn’t crypto just turn out to be a flimflam? Uh…like rewards miles?