Cyndie Martini Of ‘Member Access Processing’ On The Future Of Money and Banking

An Interview With David Liu

Ongoing learning with strong skills in research. You will get left behind before you know it unless you are alert to what’s trending and learning what matters.

Culture. When building a team, you need to be vigilant about building your culture. For me, I started out as a service leader with a consistent focus on “customer needs” as I built the company and hired new people. As a leader, the easy part was changing processes, but the culture is always there and needs to be nurtured.

A positive mindset. Never give up. Never surrender. Careers have highs and lows. Take on criticism and look for long-term gain.

Hire the right people. If you don’t know how, read, learn, and ask for help until you do.

Empower your team. Help them be the best people they can be.

The way we bank has changed dramatically over the last decade. It was not too long ago when you had to wait in line in a bank to deposit money. Today things are totally different. You can do your banking without ever walking into a bank. In addition, the whole concept of money has changed. In the recent past, money usually meant bills and coins. But today, the concept of money has expanded to include digital currency and NFTs. What other innovations should we expect to see in banking in the short and medium term?

To address this, we are talking to leaders in the banking, finance, and fintech worlds, to discuss the future of banking and money over the next few years. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Cyndie Martini.

Cyndie Martini has managed and directed successful credit union card and ATM portfolios, marketing programs and business strategies for a quarter century. In 1998, Martini spearheaded Member Access Processing’s entry into the card payment and ATM processing arena — the first and only credit union league (Washington Credit Union League) nationally to resell Visa Debit Processing Services (DPS) as a “collectively” priced card processing solution. Martini has propelled this business model into one of the nation’s leading CUSOs while fostering Member Access Processing’s relationship with Visa, Inc. into a premier and exclusive partnership.

In addition to her expertise in the payments industry, Martini has over 30 years of marketing, sales, strategic planning, advertising, and payment technology experience and is recognized as an expert in the field of card and network payment systems. A veteran of the Washington Credit Union League and League Services Inc. (LSI), Martini is a loyal advocate for credit unions, having put her experience to work helping member-based cooperative financial institutions grow and succeed. A respected professional and leader at all levels of the financial services community, Martini is often called on for public speaking and private counsel about payment solutions and innovations.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started in this industry?

Early in my career I worked as a card manager at a Credit Union — this is typically the point person for day-to-day issues, typically fraudulent charges or bad billing issues, etc. It was a great opportunity to learn about card payments, but most importantly, I learned what most impacts the card managers and what most impacts their customers. It was these day-to-day issues that I had top of mind when I founded MAP. With our unique mission of serving credit unions, our focus as a payment company has always been to reduce the number of headaches, frustrations, and unnecessary hoops that card managers and members have to deal with.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

A few years ago, my leadership team and I completed an exercise where I gave everyone a rock and asked them to write a single word on it — one thing from their work life that they wanted to let go. I asked everyone to keep their rocks for about a week and think through what it would feel like to let go of the issue they had chosen.

Our office sits on the Green River, so it was easy to walk down to the river and throw out our rocks. After a week passed, we did just that. And even though this was my idea, I was surprised how quick the process worked. After we threw out our rocks, we returned to the office and talked about what it meant to rid ourselves of the rock (issue). There was an immediate sense of relief and within a few short weeks there was a different mindset.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “Never give up, never surrender.” Even when it’s darkest, there is always a solution. It may not be what you believe is the best fit, or your choice. But the outcome that is best for all is the one you want. If you give up, you will never reach your goal. You need to stay in the fight — because it’s what you need to bring your whole team along. You need to get to the right outcome.

Ok wonderful. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell our readers about the most interesting projects you are working on now?

As a CEO, I’m always concerned with growing our company. Part of that process is being an advocate for credit unions. I believe that member-owned credit unions are the future of the retail financial industry. The opportunity is out there. The pandemic has forced radical change in retail banking. It has accelerated the expansion of online and mobile banking services. The physical location and number of bank branches is less a consideration for customers when choosing a retail banking option. All these changes favor credit unions, but only if they stay up with robust online and mobile services, and top-class bank and credit card services.

How do you think this might change the world?

We need to constantly remind ourselves and our partners that it is service that still defines transactions that matter and capture loyalty. As online purchasing, remote work, and online banking continue to grow, what needs to accompany that is a devotion to customer service. That is usually the first casualty of online interactions. I know of no one who isn’t frustrated with phone trees. In this new economy, the winners will be the companies that find a way to give their customers the best service. At my company, service is the first thing with think of in the morning and the last thing we think about at night.

What most excites you about the banking or payments industry as it is today? Can you explain what you mean?

The evolution of new products. While cards are still the primary means of paying for things in the U.S., we are seeing a remarkable adoption of new payments methods and transaction types. According to Visa, contactless debit and credit card usage in the U.S. grew 150% from March 2019 to March 2020 and, with about 80 percent of consumers saying they have used P2P (peer-to-peer) payments like Venmo or Zelle at least once, I think it’s just a matter of better safeguards before consumer feel comfortable using it more often.

What most concerns you about the banking or payments industry as it is today? What would you suggest needs to be done to address that?

Smart adoption of payments. The banking industry is evolving too swiftly for many of our customers. We are rolling out new payment methods before consumers have the skills to implement them successfully. This is potentially dangerous since some new payment methods like P2P don’t have the safeguards that debit and credit cards have, and consumers might not understand the risks. This creates an imperative for credit unions to build or expand financial education offerings and services.

How would you articulate how the concept of money has changed in recent times? Is it really a change? How is it still the same? Can you explain what you mean?

I’m a huge supporter of block chain and P2P. Right now we’re building a foundation and part of that is the need to build the compliance and regulatory safeguards to make their systems secure for consumers.

Based on your vantage point as an insider in the finance industry, what innovations should we expect to see in banking in the short and medium term?

Greater adoption of blockchain and faster payments. The Federal Reserve is already working with its partners to design a framework called FedNow. It is currently in the pilot phase, With the proper safety measures and fraud systems in place, the FedNow service could be revolutionary in providing businesses and individuals the ability to send and receive instant payments, allowing recipients to have full access to funds immediately.

How has the pandemic changed the way banks interact and engage with their customers?

I read in Forbes recently that the pandemic has turned the consumer into “digital-first users,” requiring banks and credit union to offer more convenient and easy-to-use digital apps and to fully automate all their processes from loan and membership applications to transaction processing and customer service. I’ve already talked about the need to deliver better customer-facing services. But, financial institutions need to automate their back-office systems to be competitive in those areas the customer doesn’t see, but experiences, as well.

In your particular experience, how has the pandemic changed the way you interact with, and engage your customers?

It has increased our opportunity for engagement. The pandemic forced all of us to use Zoom and other remote tools. Ironically, this meant seeing more of our customers and limiting voice only contact options. This has been so successful that I don’t think we will go back to non-visual communications in the near term.

In my work in the telecom space, I’m very interested in the importance of user experience. How much of your interactions have moved to digital such as chatbots, encrypted messaging apps, phone, or video calls? How has this shift impacted the user and customer experience? What challenges do these apps present when used as a customer engagement tool?

User experience is the key to the digital age. We can’t get ahead of our customers, or we risk their abandonment. We can’t force our customers to adopt to new technologies. We must help them, educate them, and inform them about how to use the technology and why they should use it. We must design technology that is intuitive and easy-to-use. We need to offer strategies used by the electronic gaming industry like rewards for correct or successful usage. This can be as simple as visual cues that the customer has successfully conducted a transaction.

Fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Modern Finance, Banking and Fintech industries?

1. Ongoing learning with strong skills in research. You will get left behind before you know it unless you are alert to what’s trending and learning what matters.
2. Culture. When building a team, you need to be vigilant about building your culture. For me, I started out as a service leader with a consistent focus on “customer needs” as I built the company and hired new people. As a leader, the easy part was changing processes, but the culture is always there and needs to be nurtured.
3. A positive mindset. Never give up. Never surrender. Careers have highs and lows. Take on criticism and look for long-term gain.
4. Hire the right people. If you don’t know how, read, learn, and ask for help until you do.
5. Empower your team. Help them be the best people they can be.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Like who you are and value what you do. Learn your talents and use them every day.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

I publish a weekly blog article on LinkedIn. You can read them at Blog.MAProcessing.com.

Thank you so much for the time you spent doing this interview. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success.