Magnify logoSubscribe To Magnify

SHAZAM Advisory Council Fall 2024 Meeting highlights

The SHAZAM® Advisory Council held its eighth scheduled meeting Nov. 12 – 13 in Phoenix. The SAC is made up of senior staff from our client base of community banks and credit unions, and these meetings offer a unique opportunity for SHAZAM to understand client needs and better help institutions reach their goals. Below is an overview of the topics discussed at the last meeting. At the next scheduled meeting in April, SHAZAM will provide an update on these discussion points. We’ll also share highlights from the April meeting in Magnify.

Product updates

The SHAZAM team shared specific product changes, updates and improvements made after the April 2024 SAC meeting.

Top takeaways discussed include:

  • Enhancements to the digital-card-issuance API based on previous SAC feedback are higher on our integration/API priority list. These enhancements include meeting the PAN and CVV2 needs in the APIs and issuance of the physical card with the same BIN as the digital card.
  • We’ve queued up the initiative to work with a card personalization provider on an instant issuance solution, tightly integrated with our existing solutions for our CardCreate® product.
  • We are accelerating our digital banking roadmap, focusing on continuous and incremental improvements and pursuing the strategy of opening up integration with other cores.

Communications and enhancement request updates

The SHAZAM team shared results of the Spring 2024 SAC meeting survey focused on communication preferences. The overwhelming response from the group was they don’t feel they are receiving too many emails from SHAZAM.

SAC members confirmed the best days to receive emails are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. SHAZAM shared that our client communications schedule continues to focus on Tuesday – Thursday. Additionally, a majority of SAC members are interested in a digital email library. SHAZAM is actively pursuing a digital email library option housed in SHAZAM Access for easy retrieval. Next, the Learning team shared their plan for on-demand learning courses, which includes the following 2025 roadmap items.

  • On-demand learning for new employees:
    • SHAZAM Access
    • SHAZAM Core®
  • Product knowledge:
    • A combination of on-demand courses and short videos that’ll provide a high-level knowledge of SHAZAM’s product and services.
  • New webinars:
    • Fraud
    • Compliance
    • Industry hot topics

Product roadmap discussion

The focus of the product roadmap discussion was to understand SAC members expectations for roadmaps and to align on how SHAZAM roadmaps can better support clients’ strategic needs. The group gave feedback on several roadmap design options, which will help SHAZAM make adjustments to rendering our roadmaps going forward.

Premium Power Marketing material and premium training

In this session, SHAZAM shared the idea of subscription-based learning material and premium content and asked SAC members for feedback. A majority of SAC members expressed interest in both subscription-based and individually priced options.

Digital and DocuCommand®

SAC members received live demonstrations on SHAZAM Digital and DocuCommand services and had the opportunity to ask questions about the products. SAC members also shared the criteria they look for when choosing digital banking and document imaging products.

Faster payments update

In this session, SAC members discussed interest in: sponsoring transaction sending activity, instant payment credit receive and sending capabilities, and more specifically, sending instant payments via RTP® and FedNow® rails.

Members indicated they are interested in sponsorship activity but do have compliance and resource dedication concerns and would like more education before pursuing.

Several SAC members have already adopted credit receive. Overall, members are more hesitant about sending instant payments than receiving instant payments.

Seventy percent of the group agreed instant payments via RTP and FedNow will be significantly important in 3 years.

Looking ahead

SHAZAM truly appreciates the commitment and partnership of SAC members who contribute to this effort. The feedback received in these meetings is invaluable and helps us shape our offerings. We’re looking forward to our April 2025 SAC meeting ahead of the SHAZAM Forum. If you have a suggested discussion topic for future meetings, please let us know.