Mitek to Take Aim at Remote Deposit Dollar Limits

Citibank won’t take a remote deposit of a check of more than $500. At PNC Bank the maximum is $2,500. Chase’s limit is $2,000.

These limits do not sit well with Mitek Systems Inc., which is the main purveyor of remote deposit capture and aims to expand adoption of RDC.

So Mitek is doing something about it. In an effort to remove “governors” from RDC, the tech company will begin identifying and sharing related data on duplicate deposits in real time, Bank Innovation has learned.

During a visit with Bank Innovation yesterday, James B. DeBello, president and chief executive of Mitek Systems, told us that the company is setting up the Mobile Deposit Alliance, a venture that will allow participant banks to share deposit data. DeBello described it as a “give get ” initiative, in which “subscribers” will “give” and “get” alerts via secured interface of checks that might be deposited multiple times.

DeBello said no personal check data will be shared through the service, just bank and check-specific data.

Multiple deposits is the great risk in RDC. Currently, there is no way for one bank to know whether the same check is being deposited via RDC with other financial institutions. This risk factor has led many banks’ risk managers to set RDC deposit limits — limits that DeBello called “artificial.”

“Risk managers don’t like uncertainty,” said DeBello, who added, “I want to emphasize that we have not seen any fraud” in RDC to date.

DeBello offered no hard time table for the launch of the Mobile Deposit Alliance service, but he said that “participants have gone through beta — it works.” He did not share an estimate for the number of banks Mitek forecasts will participate.

DeBello does not see the Mobile Deposit Alliance service as being a great contributor to Mitek earnings, at least not initially. Rather, he sees the service as more of a benefit to the 564 banks under contract for RDC.

About 200 of those banks are active RDC users, according to the company.

DeBello has great expectations for the Mobile Deposit Alliance, because the deposit ceilings “correlate to traffic,” and if there is anything Mitek wants, it is more RDC traffic.