By Ray Birch
CINCINNATI— As vehicle prices remain elevated and auto loan terms continue pushing further into seven-year territory, Kemba Credit Union is betting that one of the next big competitive plays in auto lending may be a simple one: letting members shop by the monthly payment they can actually afford—before they fall in love with a car they can’t.
Kemba and FlexPath DXP say the Cincinnati-based credit union is the first CU to launch FlexPath’s identity-verified, payment-first vehicle shopping experience inside its Member Auto Center, allowing members to enter a target monthly payment, down payment and vehicle type, then returns all vehicles across participating dealer inventory that fit that budget at once, rather than forcing the shopper to evaluate one vehicle at a time.
The rollout comes as affordability pressures in auto finance keep mounting. Kelley Blue Book said the average new-vehicle transaction price in March reached $49,275, while Edmunds reported the average amount financed on new vehicles hit a record $43,899 in the first quarter. Edmunds also said the average monthly payment on financed new vehicles rose to a record $773, and that 84-month-and-longer loans accounted for 22.9% of financed new-car purchases in Q1—an all-time high.
That is exactly the dynamic FlexPath CEO Tarry Shebesta said the tool is designed to address.
“Instead of starting with a car and saying, ‘Oh, I want to buy that car,’ and then asking, ‘Can I afford it?’ it starts with, ‘Well, here’s what I can pay per month. Here’s my budget and my money down—what can I get?’” Shebesta said. “It just kind of flips the model from hunting cars and hoping I can buy it…to, ‘Here’s my budget. I need to get a sport utility—what can I get?’”
said that change matters because too many borrowers begin with the wrong target.
“I would get people that would be like, ‘OK, I want to get this Corvette…’ and we would be like, ‘OK,’ and they would apply and then we wouldn’t approve them because it wasn’t in their budget—they should have been looking at a Camaro, not a Corvette,” he said. “Once you’re stuck on that particular car and you can’t afford it…it’s just not fun. So, I thought, ‘Why don’t we create a product that can get the customer in the right car from the very beginning, which saves everybody time and headaches?’”
Help CUs Stay Relevant
For credit unions, the larger implication may be strategic. As captives continue to dominate showroom financing and consumers increasingly fixate on the payment more than the rate, a payment-first model could help CUs stay relevant earlier in the shopping process. Shebesta said the platform can show both new and used vehicles, and in Kemba’s case is being paired with dealer inventory across the credit union’s preferred network.
The experience can also surface lease and finance options when those options better fit the member’s payment target.
“The credit union loves that because now they’re able to become more competitive with other lenders and the captive programs from the OEMs,” Shebesta said, adding that the platform can also incorporate manufacturer incentives on new vehicles to make CU financing appear more competitive on a payment basis.
The experience launched at the Cincinnati Auto Show and is now also being promoted in branches and at events through QR codes that allow members to instantly begin the payment-based shopping experience on their phone, Shebesta said early usage has been encouraging, though the company and credit union are not yet providing hard production numbers.
“The early engagement has been strong, with members actively interacting with payment-based inventory and dealers joining the platform daily, because the more inventory you have, the better chance you have of somebody finding a vehicle that matches their budget,” Shebesta said.
Fraud Fighting
There is also a fraud-control angle. Before showing payment-qualified inventory, the tool verifies a member’s mobile number with a one-time passcode and then runs a soft-pull credit check.
“The first thing we’ve got to do is verify that it’s a real customer, a real number, so that it significantly reduces fraud and filters out bad actors before they enter the funnel,” Shebesta said. “That’s another big component that lenders are dealing with right now.”
Unlike traditional payment tools that rely on estimated inputs, the platform generates payments based on verified identity and real credit data, ensuring the results reflect what the member can actually qualify for, Shebesta explained.
Whether payment-first shopping becomes a niche feature or a broader shift in how credit unions compete for auto loans may depend on whether more CUs decide that, in a world of $773 monthly payments and record-long terms, members no longer want to shop for a car first—they want to shop for a payment, concluded Shebesta.