Streamlining Social Security direct deposit switching

How AAACU and Digital Onboarding turned a member need into a seamless digital experience

Alpena Alcona Area Credit Union (AAACU) is a state-chartered credit union serving more than 50,000 members across northeastern Michigan. As a state-chartered institution, AAACU's membership includes a significant proportion of older adults who rely on Social Security and federal benefit payments, many of whom may never visit a physical branch. This makes the digital channel not just a convenience, but a critical lifeline for member engagement and financial access.

The challenge: A hidden friction point in ACH adoption

After launching onboarding campaigns through Digital Onboarding, AAACU began reviewing performance data to validate the member experience. What they discovered was that the majority of ACH direct deposit attempts being initiated through the platform were for Social Security, and the data revealed a pattern of abandoned attempts, signaling that members were running into a federal authentication requirement that the Social Security Administration (SSA) simply doesn't support for third-party switches.

What the data showed
‍"What jumped out to me was that the majority of the attempts for ACH were for Social Security. And we had a lot of abandonment, failure, and bad credentials."
‍
‍Alicia Payne, Digital Operations Specialist, AAACU

Since the SSA does not support the same standard credentialed login flow used for most direct deposit switches, members were presented with a process they could not complete, resulting in frustration rather than the frictionless experience AAACU had set out to create.

Evaluating the options

Once the opportunity was identified, AAACU and Digital Onboarding partnered to explore the best path forward. The AAACU team determined they had two options:

Option A: Return to a previous vendor

AAACU could patch the gap by re-engaging a prior vendor, but this approach would have resulted in a "Frankensteined" solution: two separate vendor systems, a disjointed member experience, and no single source of truth for campaign performance.

Option B: Solve it within Digital Onboarding (chosen)

Rather than introducing a second vendor, they brought the challenge directly to the Digital Onboarding team and asked, "Can we fix this together?"

The answer was yes.

The solution: A smarter campaign experience

The team discovered that AAACU actually had the internal capability to initiate ACH transfers for Social Security and federal benefits on behalf of members; they just needed the right member-facing interface to capture intent and route the request appropriately.

Digital Onboarding worked with AAACU to redesign the relevant campaign slide and introduce a simple but powerful interaction: radio button prompts that ask members directly:

The member-facing experience
“Do you want us to help with the switch?" Rather than requiring members to navigate a federal portal login, members simply select Yes or No. AAACU's team handles the rest.

The result is a clean, accessible experience that meets older members where they are, eliminating the login barrier entirely and replacing frustration with confidence.

"We're overall hoping it just creates that seamless experience for our members and builds that relationship with them. That's always the goal."
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‍Alicia Payne, Digital Operations Specialist, AAACU

Why it worked: Key takeaways

• Data-led insight: AAACU didn't guess; they dug into the data. Campaign analytics surfaced an invisible problem that member-reported feedback alone never would have caught.
• Partner-first mindset: Rather than patching around Digital Onboarding with a second vendor, AAACU leaned in and found that the platform could solve the problem natively.
• Member-first design: The final solution eliminates the most common failure mode entirely. Simplicity was the feature.