Youth banking is transforming how credit unions engage families and prepare the next generation for financial success. In this episode of Credit Union Conversations, host Mark Ritter sits down with Alexey Krasnoriadtsev, CEO and co-founder of boucoup, to explore innovative family banking solutions that are changing the game for credit unions. Alexey shares his remarkable journey from Soviet-era Belarus to becoming a fintech entrepreneur in Austin, Texas, and explains why digital banking tools for kids and teens are no longer optional—they're essential. The conversation reveals how to teach kids about money using banking apps through practical features like parental oversight, chores and allowance tracking, and even simulated loans that build real-world financial literacy.

What You Will Learn in This Episode: 

✅ How youth banking programs have evolved from money-losing initiatives to profitable opportunities for credit unions, with kids now holding $800-$1,500 in deposits and generating full asset yields on no-cost accounts.

✅ Why family banking tools with parental controls, money management features, and digital chores and allowance systems are essential for teaching financial literacy in a cashless society, where kids need cards earlier than ever before.

✅ The critical mistakes credit unions make during digital banking implementation, including inadequate testing of edge-case scenarios and a lack of proper project planning that leads to production problems.

✅ How innovative banking education features like parent-supervised loans with interest and late fees help teens experience real-world financial concepts like amortization before entering adulthood.

Subscribe to Credit Union Conversations for the latest credit union trends and insights on loan volume and business lending! Connect with MBFS to boost your credit union’s growth today.

TIMESTAMPS:  

00:00 Intro: The 25-year challenge credit unions face in attracting young people, and a conversation about youth banking solutions

03:17 Alexey Krasnoriadtsev shares his origin story, from Soviet-era Belarus to America, working as a dishwasher and theme park cleaner before founding his mobile banking app company

10:30 Banking On solves a California credit union's digital banking crisis, transforming thousands of one-star reviews into five-star ratings through API-connected mobile banking apps

13:32 Boucoup, the family banking concept, explains how financial literacy tools help parents supervise kids' spending through chores and allowance, loans, and kid debit cards

26:22 Critical advice on credit union innovation implementation, emphasizing the importance of comprehensive testing, project planning, and quality assurance 

KEY TAKEAWAYS:  

✅ Youth banking is now a profitable strategy—today's cashless society means kids need cards early, resulting in average deposits of $800 for 13-year-olds and $1,500 for 17-year-olds, generating full 4% asset yields on no-cost accounts.

✅ Family banking tools create emotional bonds and practical financial literacy through features like peer-to-peer transfers with photos, digital chores and allowance tracking, and parent-supervised loans with interest rates and late fees that teach real-world financial concepts.

✅ Successful digital banking implementation requires comprehensive testing. Credit unions must demand detailed project plans, test 60+ edge-case scenarios with multiple accounts, and invest in quality assurance before production launch.

✅ Member engagement with the next generation starts with solving parent pain points—giving kids supervised debit cards instead of credit cards creates sticky family banking relationships where entire households bank together at one institution.

ABOUT THE GUEST:

CEO @ boucoup - super-charged youth banking platform

Boucoup - Website

Alexey Krasnoriadtsev - LinkedIn 

RESOURCES MENTIONED: 

Mark Ritter - Website

Mark Ritter - LinkedIn

SEO KEYWORDS: 

Credit Union Conversations, Mark Ritter, MBFS, Credit Unions, CUSO, Youth Banking, Family Banking, Digital Banking, How To Money Management, Parental Controls, Banking Education, Teach Kids About Money Using Banking Apps, Chores And Allowance, Financial Literacy, Mobile Banking Apps, Debit Cards For Kids, Bocoup, Beaucoup Youth Banking Program

[00:00:27] But now there are lots and lots of podcasts and there's a lot of good people out there. And we hope, uh, you choose credit union conversations in your mix of, uh, podcasts while you're. In the car, you're at the gym, you're walking the dog, you're mowing the grass wherever, or sitting in with for, uh, some background noise while at work.

[00:01:27] Attracting teenagers, attracting students, attracting young adults. And I realized this morning as I was thinking about this episode, the people that we're targeting 25 years ago are now old people. So, and we we're, I don't know, we're, we're getting better, but I don't know how much better we are getting to it.

[00:02:05] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: How

[00:02:06] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: I'm usually, Mr. How do you pronounce your last name? So it was very close.

[00:02:12] Mark Ritter: Give me the pronunciation,

[00:02:17] Mark Ritter: Yep.

[00:02:20] Mark Ritter: You know, I, I grew up in a very ethnic, uh, uh, town, so I was used to, uh, U used, used to a lot of Polish names, Russian names, Ukrainian names. So I, I

[00:02:37] Mark Ritter: That's where my heritage is from, uh, the Polish and Lithuanian areas.

[00:02:53] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: Makes sense. Makes sense.

[00:03:14] So, so take it away.

[00:03:36] Mark Ritter: did, did you grow up in Russia? Russia, or was it another one of the, the other Soviet areas?

[00:03:47] Mark Ritter: Yep.

[00:04:11] They didn't have money. It's like, no, people had money. There was just nothing to buy with the money because that, and that was the. Um, of the socialism, right? Very controlled economy. Um, so when the Soviet Union collapsed, I saw in my teenage years this transition and it was, it was tough on people. 'cause over 70 years, they're so used to government taking care of them and not really.

[00:05:02] 'cause a lot of people just didn't want. That market economy. And they did. And is

[00:05:12] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: since 1994. So 31 years still a president that, uh, and that's when I've been a young teenager. We've, we, you know, we tried to fight against that.

[00:05:27] Mark Ritter: Belarus has the easiest election counting in the country, in the world today. So.

[00:05:54] Cleaning the amusement park. And then at noon I'll go and work in Golden Coral as the [00:06:00] dishwasher. And that was my start. That was my journey. And um, uh, and, and at some point and then decided to stay. And the story, I actually went for weekend. My girlfriend and I, we went to Atlantic City to just kind of hang out and we saw this.

[00:06:27] Mark Ritter: No, it's not the same. Atlantic City.

[00:06:42] At that point we weren't staying there, we were just walking through it. But I just saw this opulence, the gold, the wealth, and I was just thinking, wow, I, I was talking to my girlfriend, do you think we could, do you ever envision us in our life being able to stay in a place like [00:07:00] this? And, um, then we look around and it's like, hold on, but like, this is.

[00:07:11] Mark Ritter: It, it was not the elite of America going to Atlantic City. It was just everyday Americans.

[00:07:30] And if I get back home, I have to be in corrupt system. It's only who my mom know, my, the parents know who, how they gonna set me up. So that's when we decided to stay. And I was, you know, immigration wise, it was quite a journey to, to get to become a citizen. 11, 12 years later. Um, uh, and then life brought me to California.

[00:08:19] Um. But it's interesting coming out of this kind of poor environment and coming to America, all I, at some point I started becoming just so greedy. Like all I wanted was money. I, 'cause I just wanted more money. And people were asking me, so what's, you know, what are your goals in life? And I'm like, I don't know.

[00:09:03] And, um. Eventually I had a big hard change, uh, a change in my life and I started thinking more about where, where's the impact? What can we do that helps people? What, what's the point of my life? How can my life be helpful to those around me? And around around the same time, we got the first contract was a credit union in California.

[00:09:57] Reviews, like I think they had like thousand [00:10:00] one star reviews in the app store and I was in the right place at the right time because CEO of the credit union at the time said, Alex, you guys know how to make that better? We said, yes, we can build a new mobile app. And um, that's how our journey was. Credit Union started.

[00:10:26] Mark Ritter: and was that the beginning of banking on, or was Yeah. Okay.

[00:10:39] Right. Similar issues that creates union, that introduce us to the community bank in, you know, in the next state that has similar issues. So we kind of became banking on with this product that is a mobile banking add-on to that digital banking provider that help people to, that help credit union. So [00:11:00] that's where we started.

[00:11:20] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: Well, I was 19, so I wasn't yet as much, but Krispy Kreme donut.

[00:11:31] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: Dunking Donuts. Dunking Donuts.

[00:11:34] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: That's where I was just like, I think I bought the whole dozen right away and I just smashed it all. So all the flavors, it just blew my mind.

[00:11:50] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: And I think I got sick to my stomach 'cause I had so many of them. But to me that was the biggest like crazy. [00:12:00] Wow. I've never experienced anything like that before in my life because in so in Soviet, there's no, because I was a. Very controlled economy. There was not many choices. Like they'll make one car and then why would you make anything else?

[00:12:42] Right. The flavors of Dunkin Donuts, that's innovation, right? Like you gotta be able to experiment and do, and we all get to benefit from that.

[00:12:56] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: Yes, sir.

[00:13:11] Yeah.

[00:13:16] Mark Ritter: Yes. Yeah. It's what a beautiful place and, uh, a vibrant city. So, and, and now banking on, you have developed a kind of a subsidiary brand of Buku on there. Yeah. Tell, tell, tell people a little bit about that.

[00:13:37] Even for myself, I was thinking, how can my ceiling be their floor? How can I equip them, prepare them so that my life, right, whatever I'm achieve, is where they start and get going better. And, and money is such an important part. Money is not the most important thing in life, right? Those who have it, it's, it's a problem.

[00:14:23] While they're still under supervision of parents, they will be better prepared. So that's on one side of it and one one side of equation is how can we be impacting that next generation? On the other side is credit unions. To me, this is the most successful nonprofit business model that doesn't require donation.

[00:15:06] So what can we do? What can I do to. To help credit unions be sustainable in that growth and to continue grow. Because I also believe that without credit unions, middle class of America wouldn't be where it is today. Right. I come from absolutely. There's few big banks and they don't have to agree on everything, but they kind of agree on everything.

[00:15:33] Mark Ritter: And, and, and if you don't like it, go to the next place down the road where it's the exact same

[00:15:58] But credit unions, [00:16:00] because of the nonprofit nature, created this competitive pressure on the whole system to, and that would benefit middle class. So to me, impacting, helping. Being part of Credit Union movement impacting that, creating sustainable or enabling the next sustainable part of credit union is important.

[00:16:44] They would want to all be in one place. And that's how it used to be in the past, right? Yes. It used to be past. You don't, did you choose your first checking account or did your parents tell you, parents tell you where it's gonna be?

[00:17:02] Here's your account. And, uh, I did the same thing with my kids. Here's our credit union. This is what you have now. They have since done a little bit of shopping for themselves. But we start at the right place. So I, I, you know, one of the things that you said that I think is really important is, you know, I just think we have to help people in their relationship with money because it's not a financial decision, it's an emotional decision.

[00:17:56] Yeah. And you really have to have that healthy relationship. [00:18:00] So, you know, one of the things that, that I see in the credit union space is people look and say, oh, you know, we have to get younger. We have to get younger for, you know, so we have all these members tomorrow. But I also think, like I look at the money and what my kids do, they're good members today.

[00:18:30] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: Yeah, absolutely. So that's one of the, actually the, the, the barriers that. We oftentimes overcome in a conversation with credit union executives. 'cause it used to be that the use programs were money losers for credit union.

[00:19:12] Kids nowadays need the cards early in life. They need the money. It used to be cash, now it has to be cards way before they got their first job. And the parents have this pain. We need to give them cards and manage that. But the beauty of that is also is that now kids, when the parents give them money, when they have birthday gifts, all that, they're not saving it in cash.

[00:19:54] And. 1500 bucks for a 17-year-old. So

[00:20:23] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: Let's get charge her the management fee for,

[00:20:33] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: Yeah. And that's what we need to prepare them for, right, because. Like gone are the days of envelopes. You're not gonna have

[00:20:41] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: different envelopes for savings goals on it, right?

[00:20:45] Mark Ritter: if, if you ask your kids, you know, to, for the cash hold, hold cash, they'd look at you like you had three heads.

[00:21:01] Mark Ritter: You used the term that I haven't really heard before, and that's family banking.

[00:21:08] Mark Ritter: How do parents fit into this and, and tell me a little bit more about what, what you consider family banking.

[00:21:29] But we're a lot, most of us quickly realize this is not a good idea.

[00:21:36] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: It's a losing strategy. And you're not teaching your kids anything good. So debit is a way better product, but it has to be simple for the parents to oversee, right? You can't just give a debit card to the kid and not being able to supervise what's happening there.

[00:22:11] And that's what a software does. So for example, there's ability for kids to like to transfer when it's, when it's transfer from me, it shows my picture. It shows what's from dad. What's it for? You know, first think of gas. And sometimes she goes and likes that transaction and I get that reaction. The heart.

[00:22:48] But the other one is very critical too, is loan. We have, think about it as a loan from the bank of mom and dad, but we have digital experience of that where the parent sets up the loan [00:23:00] over three months or 12 months, however they want it with interest and even late fees. And when kids log in, they see what looks like a loan, feels like a loan.

[00:23:27] It's the tool for the parents to coach their kids about money. 'cause doing, teaching 'em about money nowadays when the money's virtual is so hard. Yeah,

[00:23:50] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: Yeah.

[00:24:22] And, and even if it's, even if you're faking it a little bit, they understand what it is.

[00:24:55] There's a level of anxiety rising up. When kids experience money, [00:25:00] they understand the money. It. And they only do it by practice, right? It's not read an article or even watch the video. They're, everybody's overloaded with information. It's only by practice. And when they practice, they build up that self-confidence, like, okay, now I've done it, I understand it.

[00:25:40] Mark Ritter: Well, I think what banking on and Buku is doing here is, is so important, uh, to, to assist the credit unions, but ultimately to assist the members.

[00:25:52] Mark Ritter: So, I, I have a, something, uh, a question for you just to shift gears a little bit.

[00:25:58] Mark Ritter: Being that you have worked with [00:26:00] many, many credit unions in terms of buying and implementing.

[00:26:37] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: Yeah, I, it's a great question and, um, I, I think a lot of it is also psychological, right? We want, we all want to believe the optimistic outlook. So when a salesperson. Promises things. Everybody wants to believe that. And, and, [00:27:00] and I don't say like salesperson lie or anything like that, right? We everybody believe in the best outcome, but the plan B or what does it takes to get there?

[00:27:37] Uh, and the other important parts is quality. Oftentimes we see vendors, they deliver something, and then credit union has to test it out. Right. And credit union is okay at, and quality requires the special kind of right. It's actually a profession. [00:28:00] And the hardest part of that profession is not to test the happy scenarios, it's to test all the age cases, all the possible things that can go wrong.

[00:28:32] Right? All those different things that could be off. 'cause that's where usually the, uh, we see what I see often is create in this lounge. They only start testing in production and all the edge cases start popping up in production because nobody had time or efforts to look for them in the, in the [00:29:00] earlier stages of development.

[00:29:05] Mark Ritter: Absolutely. Absolutely. I've seen that dance a few times as you were talking about it.

[00:29:21] Oftentimes like, whoa, this is a lot of lift. Why do we need to do that? And because our team spends a lot of time on testing all those age scenarios. Much earlier in the cycle. So when we go live, we rarely had any P ones that were like blockers where

[00:29:38] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: members are. You know, phone lines are melting and members pissed off.

[00:29:59] Mark Ritter: All right, [00:30:00] we'll we'll wrap this up. I like to, you know, I'll just throw it out there to you, you know, gimme your thoughts in big picture in general on credit unions, the world, uh, what you're thinking about, what you're thinking about for your business, for credit unions, what's important to you.

[00:30:17] Alexey Krasnoriadtsev: Awesome. Uh, um, I'm a strong believer in credit union movement. Yes, there's consolidation happening, but I also believe it's good, right? Because when a hundred million dollar or $50 million credit union coming to us, they just, there's just not enough revenue for them to create in, invest in technology.

[00:31:01] Same with loans and whatnot. So I'm, uh, optimistic about the industry. Uh, I'm optimistic about the movement, uh, the. Um, and our goal is to help make credit union sticky. And that's where I'm investing in digital experience that make it social, make it emotional 'cause, and a family is where it starts to meet, right?

[00:31:48] Mark Ritter: All right, so if people want to talk with you about mobile apps, uh, accessing teen accounts, families, how you help 'em, where can they, uh, get in touch with you?

[00:32:13] Um, and, uh, yeah, thanks Mark for having me here. It's really good to see you. Yeah.

[00:32:40] So this is Mark Ritter, CEO of MBFS, and host of Credit Union Conversations. Thank you so much for joining us and we hope to talk to you soon.