Star One CEO Minal Gupta discusses real-time payments, AI | PaymentsSource

• Key insights: Star One Federal Credit Union has names payments veteran Minal Gupta CEO.
• What’s at stake: Credit unions risk falling behind in adopting AI.
• Forward look: The credit union is developing external uses for new forms of AI.

While the financial services industry considers strategies for artificial intelligence and digital commerce, Star One Federal Credit Union’s Bay Area neighborhood forces its hand. 

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“There are so many fintechs in our backyard. If we don’t stay relevant we’ll get left behind,” Star One CEO Minal Gupta told American Banker. Gupta, a financial technology veteran who became the Sunnyvale, California-based Star One’s CEO earlier this month, is also active in Payfinia, a credit union service organization she helped create to help credit unions embrace real-time payments and other innovation. With generative and agentic AI generating buzz, all credit unions face the same technology disruption risk as Star One.  

 “AI will be the next dot com era, so credit unions need to focus on AI,” Gupta said. 

Who is Minal Gupta?

Gupta has assumed leadership of Star One, which has about 131,000 members and $9 billion in assets. Most of its members are technology workers in Silicon Valley, placing pressure on the credit union to be tech-savvy. 

“Our members want to access to their money yesterday,” Gupta said. 

Gupta, who has been with Star One for seven years, recently succeeded Gary Rodrigues, who retired after more than 34 years at the organization. Gupta, who has degrees from Cal State Fullerton and San Jose State, has also worked in technology roles at Fremont Bank, Citi and Wells Fargo. Gupta additionally is a co-founder of Payfinia, a two-year old CUSO that’s a joint venture with bank technology company Tyfone. Gupta is also on Payfinia’s board. CUSOs pool resources to defray the cost of technology deployment for individual credit unions. Star One did not disclose the number of credit unions in Payfinia’s network. 

Before becoming CEO, Gupta influenced Star One’s digital payments strategy. Star One Credit Union was one of FedNow’s initial users, and was part of FedNow’s development, participating in a pilot and providing feedback to the Fed on issues such as developing an adoption roadmap, improving financial industry readiness and ensuring a smooth user experience. 

Star One and Tyfone’s Payfinia CUSO includes a digital banking and an instant payment system that integrate into financial institutions’ core processing systems, enabling connectivity to payment originators and digital banking providers through Tyfone’s application programming interface. Through FedNow member financial institutions, account holders can send and receive payments and have immediate access to those funds.

“We know there are credit unions out there that can’t afford real-time payments,” Gupta said. 

During her tenure at Star One, Gupta also led Star One’s adoption of Zelle and same-day ACH. And Star One was an early adopter of Paze, the Zelle-affiliated mobile wallet. 

Where credit unions have an advantage

Star One’s collaborative strategy includes working with Early Warning, a bank-owned company that operates Zelle and Paze.

While Early Warning’s owners, including giant banks such as Bank of America, Citi and Wells Fargo, are rivals to credit unions, Paze and Zelle’s security and privacy protocols appealed to Star One.“We took a leap with the technology,” Gupta said. “We want our members’ kids and grandkids to bank with us, and that can only happen if we’re providing seamless access for our members,” Gupta said. That collaborative mindset is extending to AI, according to Gupta. Star One, which is using generative AI to streamline internal work, is holding focus groups with members as part of its generative and agentic AI strategy for external use.

“Our members are really busy in their day-to-day lives, and are looking for ways to manage that,” Gupta said. 

Star One uses large language models to help train employees on new topics and processes. Star One is currently integrating AI across channels, including voice, to redirect consumer questions and requests from live agents. AI also enables non-technical staff to handle consumer communication, according to Gupta. 

As part of its AI strategy, Star One will work with other credit unions through its CUSO to examine uses for generative AI and agentic commerce. There may be demand as credit unions risk falling behind in AI. Forty three percent of credit unions list AI as a top five spending priority, according to American Banker research. That trails large banks at 68%, regional banks at 54% and community banks at 44%. 

“Credit unions actually have a leg up toward the use of AI,” Stewart Watterson, a strategic advisor for Datos Insights, told American Banker, adding about 100 credit unions are engaging with AI for automation or agentic AI in some form. “Some are just dipping their toe…and also, that’s only 100 out of 4,500 credit unions so it’s early days,” Watterson said. 

The credit union sharing model, that extends to credit union service organizations, can help defray the costs of deploying new forms of AI and other financial technology, according to Watterson. “Nothing like that exists on the banking side,” he said.