Setting up digital banks isn’t just a strategy for the big players like JPMorgan Chase, just ask Suncoast Credit Union.

Granted, the Tampa, Fla.-based credit union is rather large, with $9.2 billion in assets and 785,000 members. The credit union’s chief information officer Ted Hassenfelt told Bank Innovation that it is currently in the process of developing a new mobile app separate from its core SunMobile app.

“This new app isn’t going to be for everybody,” Hassenfelt said. “Maybe, it will be for a Generation Z audience. We are still in the early stages of figuring that out, but the app will be an additional one available in the app store. We could even rebrand it like Chime or Finn.”

This is pretty unusual for a credit union, given that digital innovation is not a high priority for most credit unions, not just because of its customer base, but also given limited resources thanks to its not-for-profit business model. In fact, a recent report shows that only 28% of credit union executives rank digital innovation as high on their priority list.

Hassenfelt is not one of them, especially given that his background is in software development. Before taking on the role of CIO at Suncoast he served as Chief Digital Officer. He currently oversees the entire digital strategy of the credit union.

“We have an entire department dedicated to innovation,” he said. “We’ve coded our entire mobile banking system and really believe that the future of banking is digital.”

“We’ve done our own coding entirely because we like to do very specific things, and don’t like waiting on people for doing them for us. Plus, we do it a lot cheaper, but also have the ability to provide a lot of customization.”

But that doesn’t mean Suncoast never partners with fintechs on projects.

Just last week, Suncoast announced a deal with Connecticut-based payments company Payrailz to renovate its payments offering to include consumer and business bill pay, bill negotiation services, P2P and A2A money transfer services.

“Even though we like to have control, there are pieces within the online banking that we simply cannot take on our own,” Hassenfelt said. “We have our own bill pay, but we don’t have P2P right now and we haven’t advanced in payments as much as we had liked to do. And that’s true for most of credit union industry- payments is just stale. That’s why we sought out a partner to help us build a modern payments offering that suits our members’ specific needs.”

On this payments initiative, SunCoast will use Payrailz’s technology to offer its members the aforementioned payments services.

For Payrailz, the partnership is a huge win for the relatively new company, which launched last November.

Fran Duggan, CEO of Payrailz told Bank Innovation, “we do payments, online billpay, account to account transfer and P2P payments, but the intention is to go beyond the ability to just process a transaction and provide a payment experience. Suncoast was very open to that and wanted to be on par with the ‘do it yourself’ culture and provide members not just payments but predictive and personalized ways of using these services.”

“The goal is leapfrog,” Mickey Goldwasser, VP of Payrailz told Bank Innovation, “I don’t want a bank or credit union to look like Venmo, I want to make a customer think ‘hmm why are we even using Venmo?’ We want out bank/credit union’s payment services to be ahead of the current industry.”

Duggan explained that Payrailz’s solution is end to end. It is entirely cloud-based and uses a smart engine, upon which it layers artificial intelligence tools. The engine will use the credit union’s data through an API platform to provide specific insights that will add personalized value to the customer. The Payrailz system can connect to all most payments rails including ACH and is also able to integrate into several cores if needed.

Suncoast and Payrailz are still working on integrating the payment offerings, which will likely go live next year.

Suncoast is the first major deal for Payrailz. Investors in Payrailz include Live Oak Bank, Wood Forest bank, and Webster Bank in Connecticut.