Powering Potential: Rethinking Your Payments Strategy With ICBA Payments

When ICBA founded ICBA Payments—then called ICBA Bancard—in 1985, the association’s wholly owned payment services subsidiary sought to help community banks manage their debit and credit card programs. While supporting and growing card payments remains the company’s mission, community banks’ payment needs look a little different than they did 40 years ago. 

With new tech in hand and much more on the horizon, ICBA Payments and TCM Bank, its subsidiary agent credit card bank, will continue to provide their combined 1,500 ICBA member customers with both card issuing and supplementary payment resources and solutions. It’s all packaged in a community bank-friendly manner that will lighten the load for smaller banks that use the subsidiaries’ services.

Jacob Eisen, CEO of ICBA Payments and TCM Bank, says, “There are a lot of newer products and services that we believe can be bolted into our offerings in a seamless way that are really going to turbocharge the payments offering that our customers have. Payment offerings must be viewed as strategic and profitable lines of business for our client banks. We are committed to showcasing the value of modern payment solutions and the vast benefits they can provide—with the right level of care and prioritization.”

Tailored payments support for community banks

Many of ICBA Payments’ customers are community banks that appreciate support in managing their debit and credit card programs. This could be because they lack internal expertise, need to allocate resources elsewhere or simply want somebody else to prioritize card program management. However, ICBA Payments is about more than just card management. 

“We don’t want our partners to look at credit and debit cards as sort of a necessary evil—that this is something that they have to have but is not a core part of their banking products and services,” says Eisen. “We want this to be something that they recognize as a value driver to them, and that means that credit and debit cards—and ancillary payment solutions generally—need to provide either cost savings, revenue enhancement or facilitate deposit growth.” 

ICBA Payments helps its community bank clients offer top-tier payments, debit and credit card offerings while creating value. For example, expensive and labor-intensive wires and ACH payments sent through inefficient batch processing are not the future. Eisen says ICBA Payments can work with banks to remake their back offices around alternative payments solutions, automation and faster or instant payments offerings like Visa Direct, Mastercard Send and FedNow. 

ICBA’s clout in the banking industry brings valuable opportunities for partnerships, too. Eisen notes that its Pidgin partnership—among others with networks such as Visa and Mastercard—is just one way ICBA Payments intends to bring high-tech solutions and offerings to market for community banks. “We’re going to continue to look for exciting new products and partners,” he says.

As always, ICBA is fueled by its members, and ICBA Payments hopes to listen to and learn from its customers to evolve its offerings. 

“We’re really excited about what this next phase is going to look like,” says Eisen. “We’re not going to be just all things card related. There are other types—other forms of payments—and we’re looking to make sure that our community banks stay on the forefront of new technology.”