***This announcement applies to credit unions who received the associated email.***
By now your credit union has likely received several communications from SWIVEL (formerly Magic-Wrighter) regarding changes taking place to former Magic-Wrighter products either being discontinued or shifting to SWIVEL resources. While many of you have been in contact with SWIVEL about this transition, they are still waiting to hear back from a number of credit unions. You need to take action on those communications!
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO
In a nutshell, your credit union needs to sign a contract so that your vendor relationship moves from Magic-Wrighter to SWIVEL, in order to avoid interruptions in the following services:
- LoanPay Xpress (standalone from your website and/or via online banking)
- A2A transfers in online banking
- A2A transfers in Phone Operator
- A2AFT (recurring A2A transfers)
- Accounts payable vendor payments via ACH
- New account funding via MOP (online membership opening process)
If you do not sign a contract with SWIVEL, by this summer these services will be deactivated for your credit union members. (If you’ve already signed a contract, don’t worry, your migrations are well underway, as described below.)
WHAT CU*ANSWERS IS DOING
Since announcing the shifts at our Leadership Conference last June, we have been meeting regularly with SWIVEL as they reach out to credit unions formerly contracted with Magic-Wrighter for the aforementioned services. We have both short-term and long-term projects with SWIVEL:
- In the short term: For the first phase of the transition, SWIVEL technicians developed some temporary bridge/translation tools that will allow continued support of these services without requiring any coding from CU*Answers developers. These tools are being implemented now as SWIVEL migrates credit unions from the M-W infrastructure to the SWIVEL environment. Our role in these migrations is minor, mostly to facilitate delivery of files to a different location.
- For the long term: The second phase of the transition will require CU*Answers to rewrite the back-end integrations to use SWIVEL APIs in place of the original M-W programs. This will allow SWIVEL to deprecate the data center in Grand Rapids. Our developers are now meeting weekly with SWIVEL technicians to work on this rewrite. This second phase transition is planned for late summer and we’ll keep in touch with more details in the coming months.
ANSWERS TO FAQS
Q: I signed up for A2A via the CU*Answers store, so do I have a contract with Magic-Wrighter?
A: Yes. While the CU*Answers Client Services team may have assisted your credit union when you first activated these services, you do have a contract with M-W, which is now owned by SWIVEL. This contract needs to shift to SWIVEL paper.
Q: I keep hearing about “migrations.” Do I need to contact CU*Answers about that?
A: No, but you do need to engage with your contact at SWIVEL. For LoanPay Xpress specifically, CU*Answers does have a small role to play but we are coordinating directly with SWIVEL on those projects and do not need anything from you in order to complete those tasks. For the remaining products, CU*Answers has no direct or indirect role in the migration, which for the most part is simply a behind-the-scenes shift in the location where data is being sent.
Q: What if I don’t want to sign a contract with SWIVEL?
A: That is certainly your choice, just be aware that the services listed above will be shut off and no longer available to your members. (For the date of this shutdown, contact your SWIVEL representative.)
Q: Are there any alternatives to consider?
A: Yes and no. Other than staying with SWIVEL there are no vendors we know of that offer a one-to-one replacement for all of these services, although we do have a few alternatives for some. For example, we have several integrations with online loan payment providers, each with their own set of features and onboarding timelines. Payrailz has a member-facing A2A service that offers real-time payments via the debit card rails, but it is available only to members, not to your staff in CBX. At this time the CBX feature for paying vendors via ACH, and the feature in MOP for new account funding, are available only via SWIVEL.
Q: If I sign up for one of these alternatives, can they be up and running by the time the existing features are shut down?
A: Not necessarily, especially at this late date. We had many CUs sign up for loan payment solutions as early as last summer when the change was originally announced, and are pushing requests through the system as quickly as the vendors can handle them on a first-come, first-served basis. When you place an order in the store we will provide a timeline for when your project can be assigned to a programmer.
