Financial App for Citizens of the World

A Toronto credit union is a leading partner in a new banking app that allows users to hold up to five currencies in a single account and transfer money internationally through a convenient and safe channel.

DUCA Financial Services Credit Union has partnered with Zenbanx as the Canadian gateway for the app that aims “to make your money as mobile as you are.” Canada is the first country in which Zenbanx, the brainchild of ING Direct founder Arkadi Kuhlmann, has launched its service; as of this fall, the company’s website promised a U.S. portal soon.

The app provides accountholders with a seamless solution for converting their funds to Canadian, U.S., Australian, Singapore, and Hong Kong dollars; euros; British pounds; Japanese yen; and rupees, the currency of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and other Asian nations. Users can also transmit money to people in other countries via a secure channel with social messaging capabilities that is cheaper and easier to use than standard wire transfer methods, says DUCA President/CEO Richard Senechal, a CUES member.

Running the app is a complex system that calculates currency exchange rates in real time, pays interest on accounts in the currencies of customers’ choice, and navigates global banking networks to facilitate money transfers securely and in compliance with various nationalities’ regulations designed to outlaw money laundering and funding of terrorism, Senechal says.

In short, Zenbanx is not just an app designed to connect to an existing core banking system, but a whole new way of providing financial services to a niche market of consumers. In the first four months of rolling out the app to the Toronto market, Zenbanx Canada signed on 14,000 users, who have the option to join $2.25 billion DUCA to access financial services in addition to those offered through the app. But beyond the opportunity to expand its 50,000 membership base, Senechal says this partnership connects DUCA with a new tool to stay ahead of disruptive entrants in financial services—to “skate to where the puck is going to be,” as Canadian hockey great Wayne Gretzky so famously put it.

Since moving from the DUCA Board to become CEO in 2012, “I’ve been agog at the rapidity of change in the financial landscape and the potential for dramatic disruption,” Senechal says. “To survive, we have to get better and more innovative as an organization, and partnerships like Zenbanx allow us to get there faster.”

Karen Bankston is a long-time contributor to Credit Union Management and writes about credit unions, membership growth, marketing, operations and technology. She is the proprietor of Precision Prose, Middleton, Wis.