Entering the New Era of ICBA Payments

I'm a big proponent of change, not for change's sake, but to grow, evolve, and strengthen what exists. As an entrepreneur at heart, I truly like to build businesses. When I look at ICBA Payments, I see a fantastic opportunity to take a solid 40-year history and write our own story of innovation and growth into the future. We have a tremendous brand, a steady business, and very loyal clients. Yet, it's time for transformation.

ICBA Payments has a strong foundation. We have an organization that is fundamentally catered towards service, and a staff that is very passionate about the banking industry we serve. Community banks are core to economic growth in our country and represent the very nature of America - independence. Our parent association represents thousands of independent community banks. Collectively, ICBA Payments and its subsidiary agent credit card bank, TCM Bank, serve more than 1,500 clients.

In addition to our expertise and sole focus on serving community banks, we also have the benefit of group buying power. By card issuing volume, we are the twenty-ninth largest card issuing business in the U.S. Our 40 years of experience, coupled with size and scale, brings real value to our community bank partners. Not only do we aggregate the buying power of our nation's community banks, but we also touch millions of consumers and small business owners in the payment flow.

Leading change

At ICBA Payments, we are listening to you about the needs you have, and we are investing in our business so we can bring the new products and services to market that help shrink the gap between the largest banks in this country and community banks. It's time for us to go on the offensive and be innovative again. We will build, license, and bring-to-market the best payments technology, products, and services to better enable our community bank partners to compete with larger financial institutions.

We're in a technologically focused era where payments move faster, and where there's automation, perhaps artificial intelligence or another advanced technology behind the scenes, that will help community banks operate more efficiently and effectively. So, in this next era of ICBA Payments, we're not only looking at what products we can bring to the market as customer-facing solutions; we're also identifying those that will help you automate and improve back-office payment functions. And we will be partnering with third parties to build those solutions in-house.

Introducing a new product-focused vision

We're committed to putting the resources, investment, and the people behind our efforts to ensure you have the best possible tools to compete in today's payments landscape. We have partnered with Pidgin to enable FedNow real-time payments for community banks via modern APIs.

We're also exploring the connectivity between our card issuing business and bank merchant acquiring needs on the other side of the transaction. Banks need to offer more holistic card payment solutions, and ones that drive the cost of issuer-funded rewards down over time. So, we are evaluating best-in-class merchant-funded rewards programs, which help you directly connect back to the communities you serve, increase transaction volume, all while potentially reducing issuing rewards liabilities.

Our goal is to bring community bank power back to the product development process. What we create will align directly with your needs. We'll have external technology partners, but we will control what products are brought to market and the overall experience across the board, before, during, and following any product implementation.

Driving into the future

We're doing all of this based on the feedback that you've provided over the last several years. You're looking for service that's more responsive to your needs, and you will have it. We're focused on developing a roadmap that outlines the best path forward so you can fully embrace payments and move to the forefront of what is to come.

It's time for us to make that shift, hit the gas, and accelerate our efforts to help you better serve your communities. Because the landscape has evolved, you need partners who understand your relationship-first model and serve you in the same way. ICBA Payments stands ready to be that partner and provide you with additional value, one necessary change at a time. We cannot wait to share more on our progress with you in the coming weeks and months ahead.