Adoption of CU*Answers’ Multiple Authentication Convenience Options (MACO) mobile banking authentication product has been remarkable, and the increased number of users across client credit unions has pushed the existing environment to the edge of capacity. Through MACO, credit unions can offer up to four additional authentication options to the mobile app beyond traditional username and password. These include voice recognition, fingerprint, face recognition (with liveliness test) and PIN for both Apple and Android devices.

This summer CU*Answers studied the environment with DAON, the provider of the software, and worked on a plan to improve performance to handle the bursts of activity received on high usage days. CU*Answers will use a two-phase approach: Scaling UP and Scaling OUT.

Scaling UP will include double capacity for the existing database server, upgrade to a 24 CPU physical machine, use the latest software version of SQL Server 2016 with additional hardware resources and implement DAON’s latest version.

Scaling OUT will spread the load across two database servers. A second virtual server will run a smaller subset of CU*Answers credit unions. Allowing two database servers will expand MACO services well beyond the limitations of a single server strategy.

“Offering additional authentication tactics to members and prospective members will improve credit union confidence in verification operations and techniques and lower resistance barriers for signing up new members,” said Brian Maurer, Executive VP Software Development.