Investing in Our Future: Improving Our Digital Backbone
A major part of that future is digital infrastructure. Members today expect reliable cards, secure self-serve banking, accessible online tools, and day-to-day banking experiences that work seamlessly whether they are at home, at a branch, or travelling. For a smaller credit union, meeting those expectations takes focused investment and careful prioritization.
In 2025, one of the most visible accomplishments was the launch of our new public website. This moved us away from a legacy provider environment and gave StellerVista a stronger, more modern foundation for content, compliance, and service delivery. The site launched with virtually no downtime, very limited member disruption, and an AA WCAG accessibility standard that places us among a very small number of Canadian credit unions offering that level of accessible public web service.
That digital engagement continues to matter. In 2025, StellerVista’s website and online banking pages were visited more than 700,000 times, more than 3,500 bills were paid through the mobile app totaling over $4.3 million, and members sent and received more than 5,000 eTransfers each way totaling more than $13 million.
In 2025, the StellerVista website and online banking pages were visited more than 2.3 million times (Over 6,000 visits per day).
In 2025, more than 30,000 bills were paid through the StellerVista mobile banking app (Over 80 bills per day).
50,000
In 2025, StellerVista members sent more than 50,000 eTransfers.
20,000
In 2025, StellerVista members requested payment by eTransfer more than 20,000 times.
Behind the scenes, we also completed a broad refresh of hardware across all branches so employees are working on more modern and dependable tools. These are the kinds of upgrades members may not always see, but they directly support stronger service, better security, and more reliable operations across the organization.
Another major initiative was what we call a “switch conversion”, that moved our debit and ATM infrastructure to a newer more reliable network provider. This project, which does have elements rolling into 2026, was a large and highly technical undertaking led by our small but mighty IT team with support from employees across the credit union. Its success is best measured by how little disruption members felt during the change, and ultimately by the improvement in reliability and acceptance of our debit cards, both locally and internationally. While some members did experience issues during this transition, the work was necessary to create a stronger and more reliable network over the long term. The final stages of this project will include members gaining access to mobile wallets and Visa Debit cards in 2026.
At the same time, we spent much of 2025 preparing for the upcoming replacement of our online and mobile banking platform, after learning at the end of 2024 that our existing platform provider, Central 1, would be discontinuing their service offering, impacting almost all credit unions in Canada. This is a major transition and our focus throughout 2025 was on due diligence, planning, vendor review, and preparing to minimize member impact as implementation work begins in the coming year.
Cybersecurity also remained a major focus throughout the year. As digital systems evolve and threats become more sophisticated, we continue to invest in staff education, stronger governance practices, and enhanced monitoring tools to help safeguard member information and assets. This includes support from a dedicated Security Operations Centre, along with continued improvements to internal procedures and oversight designed to strengthen our overall security posture.
We also began exploring artificial intelligence more intentionally. We see real potential in AI for strategy, productivity, and future service enhancement, but we are approaching it carefully. Senior leaders are learning, testing, and evaluating use cases in a measured way, without sharing member or banking information and without rushing broad deployment before the governance is right.
Taken together, these investments are not about chasing trends – they are about ensuring modern digital capability continues to support the local personal service that defines StellerVista.