Online Banking

Features I have created for a credit union’s online banking platforms.

My Online Banking Experience

I worked at a credit union during two online banking platform transitions. When I started in 2010, the credit union was using a product called Member Connect Web (MCW) by Jack Henry and Associates. This platform was very old and outdated by any standard. The system would crash nearly every day which would require a server restart to bring it back online.

One of my first projects was to assist with switching the credit union to a new platform. We evaluated several vendors over several months but eventually landed on a product by a company called Jwaala. We ultimately chose their product because it offered a very high level of customization that other vendors could not offer.

The highly-customizable architecture of the platform enabled me to manage the look and feel of the online banking system and to develop many new features. The platform was hosted on premises so I could even release new code to the system any time I needed to.

This platform served the credit union very well for many years. I developed many features for the platform – some of which are listed above. Eventually, Jwaala was acquired by a company called Alogent and the company scrapped the product in favor of a new platform.

At that point the credit union decided to do another platform evaluation and eventually landed on a product from a company called Alkami. This company is one of the biggest players in the online banking industry and offers a unified platform for both mobile app and website.

The transition to the new platform was very rocky and the credit union’s membership was decidedly not happy with the move. Most of the features that I had created in the Jwaala platform had to be abandoned with the new system.

Slowly I am adding them back into the new platform. But it is a painful process because we have very little control over when and how features are to be released. New features that would take less than a day to release to production in the old platform now take weeks and even months. Their staging environment is often unstable and their support process is very rigid and unresponsive to many of the credit union’s needs.

There are many features I was able to develop easily on the old platform that are simply not possible in the new system.

Other Online Banking Projects

There are many other online banking projects I have worked on. Some of these include:

• Special incentives program for large deposit account members
• Reminder for members to update their contact information online
• Card activation
• Invalid address warning
• Pre-filled direct deposit form

Additionally, here are some third-party integrations I have written for online banking:

• Positive Pay
• Glia
• InfoImage
• Northwest Bank Technologies
• Twilio
• Jack Henry ExtraAwards
• ACH Alert