Card processing consolidation helps Houston Credit Union.

The $431 million Smart Financial Credit Union in Houston found that it paid to bring its processing of all of its debit transactions to one processor, according to TNB Card Services, the firm that won the business.

TNB Card Services is the card processing arm of credit union-owned Town North Bank.

The processor's revenue from point-of-sale debit transactions validated by PIN climbed 8% per month after the consolidation.

Using the STAR network and TNB's card processing capabilities, Smart Financial streamlined its debit card processing onto a single network. The credit union not only gained efficiency but also increased its revenue. The first month following the April 2009 conversion, Smart Financial generated a 10% increase in revenue, by processing the debit transactions through TNB.

"Having two processors to manage basically the same card account was very inefficient," said Corbin Wilson, vice president of electronic service delivery for Smart Financial Credit Union. "Because the networks didn't talk to each other, we were duplicating work, which was completely unproductive. We saw that consolidating the processing under one roof could eliminate dual entry of card data and simplify the entire process."

Wilson added, "In addition to increased revenue and improved processing efficiencies, by consolidating our debit processing with TNB we were able to increase card security for PIN-based transactions by adding card verification value codes and fraud detection. These are features we didn't have with our former PIN debit processor."

Smart Financial is also now able to add debit cards at the branch level.

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