In the current mobile-oriented Internet environment, it is a great challenge for financial service providers to implement tools and capabilities that can cope with changing consumer needs. Many banks have apps that allow customers to deposit checks by snapping photos of them with their smartphones and sending it electronically to the bank. Mitek, the leading innovator of mobile imaging for financial transactions, has now introduced an app which allows customers to pay their bills with their smartphones, eliminating the need for data entry.
This next-gen app for mobile photo bill payment uses new image processing technology, which extracts billing information from the photograph of a paper bill. Payment information can be collected from the photograph of the paper check or credit card. Customers can now make payment of their bills using their smartphone without logging onto either the bank’s or biller’s website.
Mobile application development is certainly scaling new heights with such innovations. Studies shows that Mobile Photo Bill Pay adoption is expected to reach 33% among adult U.S. consumers by 2018, which in turn, means the migration of 1.4 billion bills to the MPBP channel.
Mobile Photo Bill Payment Process
- Taking photograph of the bill to be paid and of the paper check (made out to the biller) or credit card
- The technology automatically corrects image distortion, extracts relevant data, and processes the transaction
- The necessary information is extracted from the photograph of a paper check or credit card (the customer has to manually enter the 3 or 4 digit security code) taken using the smartphone
Advantages of Mobile Photo Bill Payment System
- As the technology extracts the required information from the photo image and automatically provides it to the bank’s bill-processing system, it eliminates the difficulty of setting up information for individual payee accounts
- Customers have the option to add up new payee, set up recurring bills and payments, pay non-recurring bills and make expedited payments
- As the app is template free, it can support a wide range of bill formats, making it a turnkey solution for banks
- Once the payees photograph their bills, the information available in it is saved automatically for future use
- The billers no longer need to use financial institutions as intermediaries
- As they pay the billers directly, some consumers feel they have better control over their finances
- Mitek says mobile apps attract younger consumers
In addition to all this, the technology benefits financial institutions by keeping all customer communication, image processing and data extraction completely encapsulated and secure. Data mining can improve customer retention and attract new customers.
