FIGFCU Puts Zelle Back After the Tulee Cutover

FIG Credit Union restored Zelle on September 24, 2026, three years after Tulee dropped it. Farmers Insurance Federal Credit Union had billed Tulee as its next-generation digital bank in 2023, then spent the next stretch answering one request: bring the rail back.

The 2023 conversion did what most core swaps fail to do. Members showed up early. Call volume on day one was so light the extra help line closed in hours. The unpaid bill was the payment tool people already used with family, not another custom tile in a Tools drawer.

Zelle Is Back in the FIG Credit Union App

On September 24, 2026, the credit union told members the upgraded digital banking experience is live. Account numbers, logins, and available history stay the same. The app listing does not. Search the store for FIG Credit Union, not Tulee, if automatic updates are off.

Zelle is back for personal accounts only, inside the FIG app, with no third-party download. It is not set up for business payments. Pay A Person contacts, the PayRailz tool that stood in after 2023, may not carry over, so members have to rebuild payees. Incoming real-time payments can post in seconds when the other bank is on the RTP network. Outgoing RTP is still listed as coming later.

The credit union had already said the quiet part in August. After the Tulee move, members kept asking for the missing rail.

When we moved to our current digital banking platform a few years ago, Zelle didn’t come with us. You told us that you missed it.

FIG Credit Union, member blog, August 20, 2026

That post also Zelle had not come along as a preview of the fall upgrade, and it named the swap in one line: Zelle replaces Pay A Person. Mobile deposit, SavvyMoney credit scores, Apple Watch balances, in-app card controls, Bill Pay, eStatements, Skip-A-Pay, and check reorder sit in the new shell. First login sends a one-time code to the email or phone on file. Quicken and QuickBooks users were told to reconnect books so the feed does not break.

The digital banking FAQ is blunter about the conversion tax. Bill Pay payees, recurring payments, and scheduled transfers did not migrate. The new app needs Android 12 or later, or iOS 16.0 or later. Older phones still reach the website. The same pages warn of higher than usual call volume while the cutover settles.

The June 23, 2023 Cutover

Tulee’s hard launch was June 23, 2023. The credit union’s own user guide told members the old online and mobile bank would shut that day, and it warned of a payments hole around the switch. From June 16 to 25, 2023, Zelle, Bill Pay, and Transfer Money were dark. Recurring Zelle items set after June 22 would not process. A Send Money tool was due June 26 as the replacement.

Constellation Digital Partners, based in Raleigh, N.C., announced the go-live on August 22, 2023. It described FIGFCU then as a $1.5 billion credit union with more than 60,000 members, an initial investor in Constellation, and a Los Angeles-area shop that had served members for more than 80 years. The product pitch was an open, device-agnostic bank in which members pick the services they want, including remote deposit, check orders, money transfers, and bill pay.

Beth Rodgers, then FIGFCU’s chief marketing officer, said the stack was one the credit union could not get elsewhere.

Constellation’s Digital Banking has allowed us to provide our members with a truly customizable, holistic digital banking experience, one we couldn’t get with other solutions, and leverage the same powerful, adaptable technology used by much larger institutions.

Beth Rodgers, Chief Marketing Officer, FIGFCU

Kris Kovacs, Constellation’s founder and CEO, said the platform was built to be configurable for each client’s needs. FIGFCU was not a late customer. It had already used Constellation’s Fintech Connect product to enroll members and run a Tulee companion app before the full conversion.

FROM COMPANION APP TO FIG APP

1. October 19, 2021: Constellation launches its first FIGFCU digital service, including enrollment, mobile apps, and a Wave2 branch and ATM locator, while the old online bank stays in place.
2. Late 2022 into 2023: Tulee runs as a companion app for a full six months, with new tools that exist only on Tulee, before the legacy platform is retired.
3. June 16 to 25, 2023: Zelle, Bill Pay, and Transfer Money go dark for the cutover window.
4. June 23, 2023: Tulee becomes the only digital bank; old online and mobile banking end.
5. August 22, 2023: Constellation announces the go-live and the Tulee brand.
6. December 31, 2025: CU NextGen, a Cincinnati CUSO, announces it has bought Constellation.
7. August 20, 2026: The credit union makes FIG Credit Union its doing-business-as name and previews Zelle’s return.
8. September 24, 2026: The upgraded FIG Credit Union app goes live and puts Zelle back on personal accounts.

Lauren Moran, then Constellation’s SVP of implementations, had described the 2021 companion step as a way to ship new digital services even when a credit union was still locked into another online banking contract. Laura Campbell, FIGFCU’s CEO at that launch, said the point was to add services the old provider would not allow, then fold them into a single experience later. Tulee was that later.

Companion Enrollment Hit 55 Percent on Day One

The conversion numbers, written up afterward by Kovacs, are the part of the 2023 story that still holds. FIGFCU did not force a cold enrollment on day one. It let members keep the old bank while it parked desirable tools only on Tulee for six months. When the old system shut, people who had already signed up were already converted.

Kovacs wrote that the credit union had watched assets fall and attrition rise as members left for shops with cleaner apps, and that the existing digital bank was hurting the business. The companion path was the answer to that, not a marketing extra.

TULEE CONVERSION RESULTS

Kovacs said the team expected a fairly small first wave and full adoption in weeks, and that both targets were blown through, including people who had never used the old app. FIGFCU staffed a dedicated help line for the usual day-one flood, then shut it after six hours because the calls did not come. Over 55 percent enrollment by the end of day one is the figure that made the companion bet look right. Over 98 percent of online banking users later sitting on Tulee is the figure that made the cutover look finished.

Those results are why the 2023 announcement read like a win. They are also why the Zelle gap lasted as long as it did. A conversion that members already treated as done is a conversion a credit union is slow to reopen.

Why Did Tulee Drop Zelle in 2023?

Tulee’s product idea was a Tools drawer. Members could add or hide remote deposit, check orders, transfers, bill pay, card controls, live chat, eDocuments, and the rest, instead of living inside a fixed mega-bank menu. Constellation’s pitch was that FIGFCU could change that mix over time without waiting on a single vendor’s roadmap. In June 2023, changing the mix meant taking Zelle out and standing up Send Money.

Play Store notes from the first week after cutover called the hole immediately. People who had sent money to relatives by email or phone number found the new rail pending, slow, or simply not Zelle. The credit union had used Zelle in its own campaigns as recently as 2020 and 2021, including prize drawings for qualifying sends. Members were not being asked to learn a brand-new habit. They were being asked to unlearn one.

THE PAYMENT RAIL SWAP

• Before June 2023: Zelle sat inside FIGFCU online and mobile banking, and the credit union had promoted it directly.
• June 16 to 25, 2023: Zelle, Bill Pay, and Transfer Money were unavailable during the Tulee cutover window.
• From June 26, 2023: Send Money, later described as Pay A Person through PayRailz, replaced Zelle for person-to-person sends.
• September 24, 2026: Zelle returns for personal accounts and replaces Pay A Person; history and contacts may not migrate.

The 2023 logic was flexibility. A credit-union-owned platform could swap fintech tiles without waiting out a core contract. The 2026 logic is the reverse of that. Members did not want a better tile. They wanted the network their friends already had. Agent-members, still the historic core of a shop born to serve Farmers Insurance people, treated the missing rail as a work problem, not a UX debate. One public reply to the upgrade even skipped Zelle and asked for Skip-a-Pay, the loan pause tool, after years of pressure on the insurance side of the house. The app is not how that membership keeps score. Cash movement and payment relief are.

CU NextGen Bought the Platform Builder

On December 31, 2025, CU NextGen said it had acquired Constellation Digital Partners. The Cincinnati CUSO said the deal took it past 90 credit unions and that it would assume the Constellation digital banking platform, keep service continuous, and fold it toward Nextly, its no-code digital bank. Kent Zimmer, CU NextGen’s CEO, said Constellation was built by credit unions for credit unions and that the buyer would keep investing without disruption.

By bringing Constellation into the CU NextGen family, we’re ensuring participating credit unions have a stable, forward-looking partner that will continue to invest in the platform, listen to their needs, and evolve the digital experience without disruption.

Kent Zimmer, CEO, CU NextGen

FIGFCU has not said the September 2026 upgrade is a rip-and-replace off Constellation. The Tulee Android package still carried a Constellation-style identifier in the store listing last updated October 21, 2025. What is public is the corporate ending. The vendor FIGFCU invested in, then used as a sidecar, then converted onto, is now a product line inside another CUSO. Continuity is the official line. Independence is not.

That matters for a credit union that chose Constellation so it would not be stuck inside one large digital banker’s feature list. Alkami still signs new credit union digital deals in 2026. Constellation’s path was the cooperative one: credit unions as owners and design partners. The sale is the second-order end of that bet. The software can remain. The independent shop that sold Tulee as a peer project does not.

The Tulee Name Leaves the App Store

Legal name stays Farmers Insurance Federal Credit Union. The public name is now FIG Credit Union, a DBA the shop says members already used. Mirella Reznic is listed as CEO. The charter is still 1074, opened in 1936, headquartered at 2255 N Ontario St. in Burbank, with eight branches. Call-report figures compiled by the National Credit Union Service Organization put $1.33 billion in total assets and 66,499 members on June 30, 2026. That is smaller than the $1.5 billion cited in the 2023 announcement, and larger than the “over 60,000” member count used then.

The 90th year brought a new Burbank branch, a new logo, a new website, and a push into full business banking for agency owners and other member businesses who had kept commercial accounts somewhere else. The digital upgrade was scheduled as part of that same pile, not as a quiet patch. On September 21, 2026, the official FIG Credit Union account warned that scammers would ride the launch and that staff would never ask for a password or a full account number.

🚨 Fraud Alert: As we launch our upgraded digital banking platform, watch for scammers pretending to be FIG Credit Union. We'll NEVER ask for your password or full account number. Questions? Call us at 800.877.2345. #StaySafe pic.twitter.com/fhXynCs8dl

— FIG Credit Union (@figfcu) September 21, 2026

Tulee did the job it was hired to do in 2023. It moved a mid-size credit union off a digital bank members were leaving, and it did it with a companion app that beat its own forecast by more than 500%. The name is now a store-listing footnote. Zelle is back because members kept asking. Bill pay has to be typed in again. RTP send is still a promise. The extra help line that closed after six hours in 2023 is the one piece of that launch the 2026 cutover has not tried to repeat.