The Dakota Credit Union Association (DakCU) has entered a referral partnership with Rippleshot, giving credit unions across North Dakota and South Dakota a new resource for identifying card fraud earlier.

DakCU serves credit unions from offices in Bismarck and Sioux Falls, with a mission focused on helping credit unions succeed. Rippleshot adds a fraud-fighting element to that mission at a time when card fraud losses are rising across the industry, underscoring how even smaller institutions are expected to keep pace with increasingly coordinated fraud activity.

“Fraud is one of the greatest challenges facing financial institutions today, and no credit union should have to fight that battle alone. We’re incredibly proud to launch this partnership with Rippleshot after more than a year of research and collaboration with credit union associations nationwide and our own member credit unions. Their insights were instrumental in helping us identify a partner that shares our commitment to protecting members and strengthening our movement. This partnership with Rippleshot represents another important investment in giving Dakota credit unions the tools they need to stay ahead of fraudsters and continue delivering the trusting service their members expect,” said George McDonald, Chief Operating Officer of the Dakota Credit Union Association.

Through the partnership, Dakota credit unions have access to two complimentary Rippleshot solutions: Fraud Interceptor and Fraud Intelligence Collective (FIC). The tools are designed to help credit unions proactively prevent fraud before it spreads, protect members from scams, account takeovers, and fraudulent mobile provisioning, and connect Dakota fraud prevention managers to a nationwide real-time peer intelligence network. That peer-network element is notable because fraud tactics often move quickly across institutions, making shared intelligence a practical layer of defense for credit unions that may not have the same scale of internal fraud teams as larger banks.

“DakCU has spent decades making sure that a credit union in Bismarck or Sisseton has access to the same tools as institutions ten times their size. Fraud doesn’t respect asset size, and until now, the intelligence needed to fight it cross-institutionally has mostly been reserved for the largest banks. Through this partnership, DakCU’s member credit unions get direct access to the Fraud Intelligence Collective. So a credit union with 5,000 members sees the same emerging fraud patterns as one with 500,000,” said Canh Tran, CEO of Rippleshot.