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Mitek Systems Inc., whose software allows users to create check images with their camera phones and then use the handsets to send the images to banks for deposit, signed its biggest processor to date this week for the six-month-old technology. Milwaukee-based Fiserv Inc. agreed to adopt Mitek's Mobile Deposit product and offer it to the more than 1,100 financial-institutions that use the company for remote deposit capture. “It's moving in the right direction,” Louise Steller, director of sales at San Diego-based Mitek, told Digital Transactions News, referring to the product's reception so far. Fiserv represents Mitek's fourth customer for Mobile Deposit, following J&B Software, NCR Corp., and RDM Corp. Fiserv and NCR, which are roughly equivalent in size as measured by corporate revenues, are the largest clients so far. Steller says it's hard to project volume for the product. Though Mitek's core check-recognition solution is involved in processing 35% of the nation's checks, “how many of those will wind up being mobile-deposit checks is the big unknown,” she says. Still, she points out that as more and more consumers and businesses adopt mobile banking, the potential for mobile deposit mounts. “If it's five checks per month, you're looking at some pretty big numbers potentially,” she notes. While Mobile Deposit can be used by consumers to deposit checks from home or other locations, research Fiserv has done indicates mobile businesses such as home-appliance repair outfits and food and beverage operations with fleets of trucks present the biggest opportunity, according to Rod Springhetti, vice president of business strategy and development at Fiserv. “Nearly all respondents indicated that businesses within these segments would be willing to pay for mobile deposit capture services,” he said in an e-mail message. Respondents included client banks and credit unions surveyed in October. Mitek's deal with Fiserv comes at a time when banks are struggling to get across to small businesses the value of remote deposit capture generally. Some 47% of small businesses had not heard of remote capture, and another 43% had heard of it but were unfamiliar with its details, according to research released on Wednesday by Aite Group LLC. Just 10% said they were “quite familiar” with the service, Aite said. The research points to the “ineffectiveness” of bank marketing campaigns for remote capture so far, the Boston-based research firm said in a statement. With Mitek's technology, a handset user logs on to his mobile-banking program and enters the deposit amount. He then snaps a photo of the front and back of the check and sends the image through Mitek's software to his bank for deposit under Check 21 rules. The software runs checks for image quality and corrects distortions. It sends a message to the user if poor lighting, blurriness, or other problems make a re-take necessary. Springhetti says Fiserv will now use customer trials to work out how to price the service and gauge probable adoption. “We continue to be focused on market research that helps us understand how the application of this technology solves real problems and how to help banks take advantage of that,” he says. Mitek's pricing to its clients is based on number of users, Steller says without giving details.
