West Virginia Credit Union Allies with InvestiFi for Digital Investing Solutions

Roy Urrico
Oct 22
6 min read

By Roy Urrico

West Virginia Central Federal Credit Union (WVCCU; $318 million), based in Parkersburg, W.Va. has partnered with InvestiFi, a white-label digital investment platform, to deliver guided digital investing solutions to its 23,405 credit union members.

With Dover, Del.-based InvestiFi's InvestTech platform, WVCCU members can invest in thousands of stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) through a self-directed solution, access guided robo-advisory portfolios personalized to their individual goals and participate in integrated financial education to make informed investment decisions.

“We are excited to work with WVCCU as it expands its digital investing capabilities. Kian Sarreshteh, CEO, InvestiFi, stated. “Community-run financial institutions' members are at risk of losing significant assets to third-party digital investment platforms, as they lack the guidance and education to make the correct investment decisions. Credit unions must come together and protect their members by introducing digital investing as a part of their offerings.”

Sarreshteh, who was focus of a Infosec People Profile, spoke with Finopotamus about InvestiFi’s investtech platform and how it can help credit unions such as WVCCU add value to their members.

Helping Members Make Informed Investment Decisions

“Partnering with InvestiFi gives our members access to digital investing safely, supported by tools and educational materials that help them grow their portfolios responsibly,” said said Terry Nisewarner, CFO at WVCCU. “The investing market is changing, and we need to evolve to meet those demands. It is critical that we provide the right solutions and education as our members explore these opportunities.”

"We have been looking for opportunities and products that make investing easier for our members. InvestiFi allows members to invest easily without having to leave their online banking account, " added Nisewarner.

By integrating InvestiFi’s solutions, WVCCU, currently in the implementation phase with InvestiFi, expects to reinforce its commitment to being a member-focused financial cooperative, offering innovative tools that allow members to take control of their investment journeys while remaining fully supported.

"At West Viriginia Central FCU, we are always looking for new ways to engage with our members. InvestiFi allows our members the ability to be involved in digital investing without having to sign up or download additional investing apps," said Nisewarner.

WVCCU serves members across Wood, Pleasants, Ritchie, Wirt, and Jackson counties in West Virginia, as well as Washington County in Ohio."For us as an institution, we expect to see additional online engagement with our members. This will give us the ability to more easily inform members of all our services available to them, said Nisewarner.

“We look forward to supporting WVCCU’s members in making informed investing decisions while helping the credit union’s mission to serve its community,” Sarreshteh said. The partnership also projects to fortify member retention by offering services that compete directly with third-party digital investment apps, and entice new members by highlighting its expanded financial education and guided investing offerings.

InvestiFi fully embedded its solutions in WVCCU's online banking platform, allowing members to invest directly from their checking accounts, a feature not typically available through third-party apps, in a familiar, secure environment.

Built from the ‘Ground Up’

InvestiFi (formerly CryptoFi), originally focused on crypto trading integration in online/mobile banking but rebranded in 2024 to reflect full-service digital investing solutions. “We built our own robo-advisory engine from the ground up,” explained Sarreshteh.

“There are a lot of third party robo products on the market, but we really felt it was important to own that entire experience. So, we could do custom things to support credit unions and now banks. Building our robo engine from the ground up took us about six months. We launched it in April of this year (2025),” said Sarreshteh.

Sarreshteh continued, “What we are really excited about is the ability to use the credit union (or bank's) money market account as the cash component for these robo portfolios. Our flow of funds is very unique and it is patent pending,” explained Sarreshteh. InvestiFi uses the checking account at the financial institution (FI) as the investment account, “which is really important because when an asset is sold, the money's automatically going back into the checking account of that FI.”

InvestiFi's InvestTech platform offers:

Stocks and ETFs – a self-directed securities investing solution gives account holders the ability to buy and sell more than 8,600 stocks and ETFs.
Guided Investing – a robo solution provides a simplified approach to investing by delivering portfolio options that align with the account holders’ risk tolerance and interests.
Crypto Trading and Stablecoins – with more than 25 coins to choose from, including stablecoins like USDC, USDT and more.

“Everything that we are doing is geared towards banks and credit unions,” Sarreshteh said, “We are not serving other markets; we are not serving other countries. We are able to do these things that keep deposits in house at FIs, because that is one of the biggest challenges they have right now. So much money is leaving and going to these third-party investment apps like Robinhood that now have banking products as well.” InvestiFi’s platform allows financial institution to keep idle cash sitting on the books and the balance sheet so they can benefit from that net interest revenue. No external money movement is required.

Integration Made Easy

InvestiFi’s products can integrate with digital banking providers such as Q2, Alkami, Jack Henry Banno, Candescent, CU*Answers, and Constellation. Sarreshteh also noted any bank or credit union that uses one of these digital banking providers for their web and mobile banking can turn on the InvestiFi solution with little technical lift. Having it integrated inside of digital banking is really important.

Sarreshteh re-emphasized the point. “All that in a single user experience. It is all in the same UI (user interface), which is really what users want. Having that digital banking integration is really table stakes on par to the experiences they can get on third party apps today.”

“The backend going direct to core for us was really important as well,” maintained Sarreshteh “because it allows InvestiFi to keep those deposits waiting to be invested at the financial institution. He added: “What we do when a user buys an asset is we just transfer money from their checking account over to an internal GL (general ledger) or DDA (demand deposit account), that the FI will set up as a settlement account.”

From a member standpoint, Sarreshteh explained, “They will access this solution only through their existing credit union's online or mobile banking apps. They can access our widget and then we will grab their data from the core to authenticate them into the experience.”

Earning for Credit Unions

Sarreshteh noted InvestiFi has launched with 12 credit unions right now and have another 20 signed up for 2025. “We've really started to see the adoption of our solution take flight.” Along those lines Sarreshteh provided some key data points:

“The first half of this year we drove on average $4.84 per member per month in crypto transaction fee revenue, which we give a 100% back to the credit union. And we do that with a discounted fee structure to most of the major exchanges that are out there. Our recommended fee structure will save the members money while also driving strong ROI (return on investment) for our solution through these crypto transaction fees back to the credit union.”
“We also give a 100% of the assets under management (AUM) and the AUM fees back to the credit union as well. The breakeven point for our solution is about $3,000 in AUM. We have only been live for about six months and just in those six months, we have already demonstrated the ability to grow the average portfolio size to about $9,000, which is greater than what we were even forecasting ourselves internally.”

InvestiFi live credit union clients include:

WeStreet Credit Union (Tulsa, Okla.; $953 million; 59,000 plus members).
Frankenmuth (Mich.) Credit Union ($1.5 billion; 75,000 plus members).
Bluestone Federal Credit Union (Sioux Falls, S.D.; $202.4 million; almost 11,600 members).
United Financial Credit Union (Saginaw, Mich.; $332.6 million; almost 21,400 members).
Clark County Credit Union (Las Vegas, $1.5 billion; 57,000 members).

Sarreshteh noted that credit unions can pick and choose which of the investment products they want to make available to their members. “I think the other important note with that too is we are not shoving these products down any member's throats. They have to opt into these.”

InvestiFi won the 2025 Finovate Award for Best Alternative Investments Solution, recognized for helping community banks and credit unions offer seamless access to alternative investments directly within their digital banking apps.