01/30/2018

Member News

KIVA Group and MX Help America First Credit Union Delight Members with Intuitive Mobile Banking Application

Give AFCU Unsurpassed Agility to Adapt to Members’ Needs

SAN ANTONIO, Texas and LEHI, Utah – January 30, 2018 – KIVA Group, a premier, omnichannel CEM/CRM software provider to banks and credit unions, and MX, the world leader in unified financial data, announced today that America First Credit Union (AFCU) successfully deployed the companies’ leading-edge technologies to power its mobile banking application. With the Helios cross-platform framework from MX and KIVA’s open integration middleware, AFCU is providing a feature-rich, user-friendly mobile experience that’s earning high praise from its members.

When AFCU recognized it was time to overhaul its mobile banking application, the institution made a bold move to take an entirely new approach to application development. AFCU had been using a waterfall development process, where programmers would make a long laundry list of changes over months, and possibly years, before implementing them. AFCU turned to MX to take advantage of the company’s agile approach and gain the ability to make rapid iterations on its mobile application. MX engaged KIVA Group to provide the integration middleware which unifies AFCU’s Fiserv core processor and all the other systems (e.g. bill pay, remote deposit capture, fraud detection, etc.) that feed into the mobile application.

“Our chief goal is to delight our members,” said Brice Mindrum, mobile services manager, America First Credit Union. “While this sounds simple, from a technology perspective it’s quite complicated. There are many connections that must be made behind the scenes to deliver a flawless member experience. MX and KIVA Group alleviate that complexity and are giving us the ability to provide an exceedingly customizable and interactive mobile application.”

AFCU members have given the application very positive reviews; thus far, it has earned a 4.5+ star rating in the Apple and Android app stores. The high degree of member satisfaction can be attributed to many factors. Among other things, Helios is a native cross-platform framework, which means it's fast, stable and device optimized, providing AFCU members with a full-feature digital banking experience on tablets and mobile phones. KIVA’s integration technology is enabling the credit union to move, exchange and translate data from disparate systems – third party and in-house services – in real-time. This ensures that all information displayed in AFCU’s mobile banking application is accurate and up-to-date after every member transaction.

The positive reviews can also be attributed to the fact that the Helios framework integrates the best of mobile banking functionality with the best of personal financial management tools, enabling members to become financially strong.

“Above all, we’re excited to see such a positive response from AFCU’s members because it means these members are getting direct financial guidance within the app,” said Nate Gardner, chief customer officer (CCO) at MX. “This perfectly matches the MX mission, which is to empower the world to be financially strong. We’re delighted to partner with AFCU and KIVA to this end.”

KIVA has also built several additional back-end features for AFCU that have surpassed the credit union’s expectations for data integration and access. For example, KIVA was instrumental in connecting AFCU’s fraud and session monitoring tool with the mobile application. The exchange of data is giving the credit union an early advantage on fraud detection and troubleshooting.

“At AFCU, member experience is far more than a mission statement, it’s a fundamental investment that contributes to members’ financial well-being as well as sustains the institutions’ growth,” said Tina Baker, CEO, KIVA Group. “This mobile application exemplifies the credit union’s commitment to providing smooth interactions and the highest degree of excellence with every contact. The integration infrastructure and features that KIVA Group are providing are the ‘bones’ of what’s going on behind the scenes, making it possible for AFCU to plug virtually any data source into the application to provide a robust mobile experience that can easily evolve to members’ needs.”

KIVA’s service-oriented architecture normalizes the messages between disparate systems allowing interactions to occur without forcing changes on those systems. The underpinning of the normalized messaging is the Credit Union Financial eXchange (CUFX) standard, with micro-services performing the translation between the normalized messages and disparate systems. Credit unions gain the ability to move and exchange data in real time between all the systems that support their various interaction channels—as well as easily manage and change business processes outside of the integration layer.

About America First Credit Union

As the largest credit union in the state of Utah, America First boasts a long-standing history and 78 years servicing members and has become one of the largest, most stable and most progressive credit unions in the country while remaining a member-owned, not-for-profit cooperative financial institution. Today, America First has 125 locations and is the 11th largest credit union in assets in the United States with more than $9.1 billion and the sixth largest credit union in membership in America with more than 918,000 members.

About MX

MX enables financial institutions and fintech providers to collect, refine and present actionable data that empowers the world to become financially strong. Founded in 2010, MX is one of the fastest growing fintech providers, partnering with more than 1,700 financial institutions and the 35 digital banking providers. For more information, visit www.mx.com.

About KIVA Group

KIVA Group provides CEM/CRM solutions that give banks and credit unions multi-channel oversight and the ability to create a great customer/member experience with every interaction. The company’s call center, unified sales and service and unified delivery channel solutions, backed by its integration services ecosystem, bridge the communication gaps between all the disparate systems that support member interactions. With KIVA’s CUFX standard Web services architecture and pre-built integration to leading core processors and other third-party systems, institutions can quickly achieve and maintain a fully integrated infrastructure. Banks and credit unions gain unprecedented agility to adapt business processes to meet evolving member and market demands—without the need for software programming. For more information, visit www.kivagroup.com, follow us on Twitter at @KIVA_Group, and visit our LinkedIn page.

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