While the European Union (EU) is embracing crypto, credit union (CU) executives largely aren’t.
This, as data in the April 2023 PYMNTS report, “Credit Union Innovation: Bridging the Cryptocurrency Divide,” a collaboration with PSCU, finds that more than half of credit union leaders (56%) say they are less than gung-ho about providing cryptocurrency products for their members.
Cryptocurrency remains a hot topic in the news, and while just under 1 in 3 U.S. consumers own cryptocurrency (31%), those who do tend to take crypto into consideration when making a host of financial decisions, including where they bank.
This points to a potential disconnect between what some credit union members want, and what some credit union executives plan to deliver.
Observers believe that the more consumers are educated about crypto’s possibilities, the more willing they may be to experiment with crypto products. Half of consumers (50%) say that one reason they do not use cryptocurrency is because they know so little about it.
But credit union executives don’t appear to be convinced.
Many credit union leaders are wary of offering cryptocurrency because of its volatility (66%) and relatively weak penetration of digital assets as a payment method (50%).
There is also a sense that cryptocurrency is a passing fad (43%), and that there is not yet enough information to determine whether investing in crypto will be worth it (25%).
PYMNTS data shows that across certain measures, the reluctance of credit union executives to market crypto products and services is only increasing as time passes.
For example, in the beginning of 2022, 56% of credit union executives cited crypto’s volatility as a factor in their reluctance — a percentage which jumped to 66% by the end of the year.
Similarly, 42% of executives cited a general lack of marketplace acceptance of digital assets as a form of payment as a factor in their reluctance to offer crypto products and services to members in Q1 2022.
At the end of the year, after Q4 2022, the share of credit union executives saying the same jumped to exactly half, or 50%.
Still, crypto’s appeal to its core audience remains strong. Nearly 6 in 10 millennials and bridge millennials in the U.S. (59%) hold or have held cryptocurrency, making them the age group most likely to have owned digital currencies.
Get the report: Credit Union Innovation: Bridging the Cryptocurrency Divide