Payfinia, an independent payment services firm providing an open payments framework, announced its partnership with Early Warning Services to offer PazeS an online checkout solution developed by Early Warning Services and offered by participating banks and credit unions. Star One Credit Union, one of the nation’s largest credit unions with more than $9 billion in assets, is the first financial institution onboarding Paze through Payfinia. “We’re proud to be launching Paze for Star One Credit Union customers later this year, bringing a seamless digital wallet experience to our 132,000 members,” said Minal Gupta, president, at Star One. Paze is a fast, easy, and convenient online checkout solution that offers added security through tokenization, where actual card numbers are never shared with merchants. Participating financial institutions will now leverage Payfinia’s digital wallet services to streamline the secure exchange of eligibility information and enable seamless access to the Paze digital wallet checkout experience. Payfinia’s digital wallet service includes a confidential computing overlay that protects critical user data supplied by financial institutions. “The confidential computing overlay service enables Payfinia to process and analyze financial data in a safe environment, ensuring both speed and security for the financial institution and their digital wallet users,” said Nizar Jamal, CTO of Payfinia. “Through our partnership with Payfinia, credit unions and community financial institutions will now have a more streamlined path to offering Paze,” said Eric Hoffman, chief partnerships officer at Early Warning Services. “Payfinia’s trusted relationships and technical capabilities make them an ideal partner to help extend the reach of Paze—bringing a fast, easy and convenient online checkout experience to more consumers through the institutions they know and already use.” According to the Paze PulseSM report, 82% of Americans report trusting their bank’s security more than third-party payment options, indicating strong consumer appetite for financial institution-provided digital wallets. “More consumers are demanding a seamless eCommerce checkout experience, and they prefer to initiate the checkout process through a digital banking solution offered by their financial institution,” said Keith Riddle, general manager of Payfinia. “We are thrilled to partner with Early Warning Services to offer Paze to our open payments framework and eCommerce services as a means for community financial institutions to enhance the digital wallet experience revenue. Through this partnership, our clients will have a seamless, eCommerce service, creating more efficient checkout experiences and satisfied consumers.” Gupta added, “Star One has been a long-standing partner of Payfinia, and together we’ve already seen the impact of modern payments infrastructure on member engagement. By enabling Paze, we’re helping them take the next step—delivering a streamlined eCommerce checkout experience that aligns with how members want to shop today.”