Credit Union Australia said it has joined a small group of banking providers to collaborate with "banking innovator" Pivotus Ventures, an "innovation studio" in Silicon Valley. Pivotus is a subsidiary of Umpqua Holdings Corporation, and was "founded with a goal of combining the power of the start-up model with the direct access to capital, customers and infrastructure available only within established financial services institutions", according to the corporate website.It was set up to allow another Umpqua subsidiary, the US West Coast bank Umpqua, to undertake high risk research without risking bank capital.CUA will become "the exclusive Australia and New Zealand partner" in a global collaboration, which also includes: the world's largest building society, Nationwide, in the United Kingdom; the Netherlands' fourth largest bank; De Volksbank; and the publicly listed US West Coast bank Umpqua, a related company to Pivotus.The agreement will allow CUA to tap into international banking and technology expertise to explore and develop new digital banking opportunities that will improve member experience, while bringing a valuable Australian perspective to the group. CUA will have exclusive rights to test the new digital banking propositions and other ideas being developed out of Pivotus in Australia, and potentially offer the solutions to other financial institutions, particularly in the member-owned banking sector.CUA chief executive officer Rob Goudswaard said that as Australia's largest credit union, it made sense for CUA to look to the opportunities being explored by larger international peers, in an effort to continually improve member experiences."Collaborating with Pivotus will help us deliver on our strategy of offering members the digital services and channels that will enable them to access CUA anywhere, anytime," Goudswaard said."This international expertise gives CUA an opportunity to innovate faster, cheaper and at a greater scale than if we go it alone. This allows us to bring new services to members more quickly."CUA said the opportunities being explored through the collaboration will complement its existing digital offers to members including online and mobile account opening and the Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay digital wallets. A further motivation will be the fast approaching soft launch of real-time payments via the NPP. A new CUA mobile banking app is due to be launched in the coming months, and the credit union is preparing to bring members the benefits of real-time payments via the New Payments Platform.