First Bank to Go Live With Mitek’s ‘Mobile Photo Bill Pay’ by Yearend

Mitek Systems Inc., which wowed the Finovate audience yesterday with its “RDC for bill pay” software, told Bank Innovation that the new mobile feature will go live at the first bank to use the service “by the end of the year.”

Mobile Photo Bill Pay, for which Mitek won “best in show” at this week’s Finovate, allows users to take a photo of a bill with a smartphone and pay that bill through the mobile device or through on online bill payment portal. The Mitek software records the bill and populates the necessary fields to facilitate bill payment.

Drew Hyatt, Mitek’s SVP of product development, told Bank Innovation that the IT firm is talking with several financial institutions about installing the new product. Additionally, Mitek has talked to billers about the product, and, according to Mitek, they are eager to see it go live.

Generally, the product has about a 90% success rate. In other words, 90% of the bill photos end up successfully resulting in a bill pay fields being properly populated and payment of that bill being possible. But Mitek says that success rate increases to the “high 90s” when taking into account the “curing” Mitek does in real time by synchronizing incoming data with databases of billers.

I thought Mobile Photo Bill Pay was one of the best products showcased at this week’s FinovateSpring. The product absolutely overcomes one of the greatest hurdles to switching banks: online bill pay. Online bill pay takes so long to set up that consumers would rather stick with their existing financial institution, as bad as it might be, rather than go through the process of setting up online bill pay at a new bank. I should know; I am one of those consumers.

But the Mitek product kills that hurdle. Mitek officials said they have heard similar feedback from the market, and I suspect Mobile Photo Bill Pay will not be welcomed by many banks, particularly large institutions. In a conversation with Mitek and a credit union executive, the CU exec suggested that Mobile Photo Bill Pay has as much potential to help a bank gain new customers as it does to lose existing customers. That could be true. It will depend on the bank, and by and large my expectation is that larger banks will absolutely abhor Mobile Photo Bill Pay.

But Mitek might avoid banks’ wrath after all. The company is developing an iteration of Mobile Photo Bill Pay for use at ATMs. This version of the product will have ATMs take an image of a bill and facilitate its payment, much as some ATMs are outfitted with RDC. And just like that the joy returns to my banker friends.