Deluged with Requests, Fiserv Rolls out a Mobile Capture Service

With the nation’s largest bank processor on board, mobile remote deposit capture seems likely to get a big boost beyond its early-adopter phase of a handful of pioneering financial institutions. Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv Inc. on Wednesday announced the launch of the service it dubs Mobile Source Capture, which allows a consumer to deposit checks by taking pictures of them through a downloadable smart-phone application and uploading the images to the bank or credit union holding his or her checking account.

Fiserv has been testing the service with an undisclosed number of financial-institution clients since last year. Gary Brand, Fiserv’s director of source capture solutions, tells Digital Transactions News that he expects client announcements about rollouts to begin in the next 30 to 60 days. Brand wouldn’t predict how much adoption Fiserv expects, but says interest is high. “We do have very aggressive goals for the mobile application,” he says. “The mobile application is the biggest thing to happen to remote deposit capture since its inception.”

Ironically, Fiserv is getting a lift from the consumer mobile-capture advertising campaign JPMorgan Chase & Co. is running this summer in select markets. Chase’s TV commercial shows a newlywed couple taking pictures with an iPhone of the checks they received as wedding gifts. Executives at bank and credit-union clients of Fiserv, and others as well, who’ve seen that commercial are asking if Fiserv has such a service, calling “to the point that our phones are ringing off the hook,” says Brand.

Chase is the biggest bank so far to offer mobile capture for consumers (Digital Transactions News, July 6). With its app for Apple Inc.’s iPhone, Chase joined USAA Federal Savings Bank and a few credit unions in offering a service that bankers and tech executives see as especially appealing to younger consumers. Another new provider is State Farm Bank, a subsidiary of insurance giant State Farm.

Fiserv has the potential to bring a vast number of new financial institutions into the mobile capture market because 4,000 institutions representing 60 million consumers already use the processor’s online-banking services. Consumers and businesses using home- or office-based remote capture services through Fiserv have a total of 161,000 scanners, or endpoints.

Fiserv initially will offer the mobile service for Apple Inc.’s iPhone and camera-equipped BlackBerry smart phones from Research in Motion Ltd. A version for smart phones running on Google Inc.’s Android operating system will come out in the fourth quarter, Brand says.

Under the hood, Fiserv’s offering uses software from San Diego-based Mitek Systems Inc. to capture the check images, digitize them, and prepare them for exchange under Check 21 protocols, the system that allows financial institutions to clear electronic images of paper checks. “We certainly leveraged Mitek’s capability,” says Brand. “It’s very elegant; they do a great job.”

Fiserv, however, developed much of the service’s functionality, including its user interface, Brand says. He describes that interface as having “big buttons, colorful and intuitive. It really follows the iPhone experience nicely, and it translates well to the BlackBerry.”

Based on feedback from test users, Fiserv says it expanded the product to include multi-item deposit capability, single sign-on authentication, and a virtual endorsement feature, which is the ability to place a virtual stamp on the back of the image. Risk-control features include duplicate detection and a near real-time deposit-review feature that Fiserv says allows for fast feedback to the phone user while ensuring the deposit is valid before it enters the deposit cycle.

The processor is offering Mobile Source Capture as an in-house version under which a client would license Fiserv’s application, or on an application service provider (ASP) basis in which Fiserv handles the operations and earns per-transaction fees.