Mitek is making it easier to pay cable bills — or any bill at all.
The San Diego-based imaging company is well-known in the banking space for its remote deposit capture and mobile photo bill pay solutions, and has a strong foothold in the insurance space, as well. The company announced today that it is now developing solutions outside financial services, launching a mobile bill pay service for “one of the nation’s largest cable, telecommunications and media companies,” according to a press release. Mitek declined to name the company, but there is only a short list of companies that fit the description above.
This product has wide-ranging implications, because Mitek is able to implement its solution for just about any biller out there. Specifically, the company has identified seven likely use cases:
- major credit cards;
- store-branded credit cards;
- utility bills;
- mobile phone bills
- mortgages;
- vehicle loans; and
- student loans.
The cable company sought Mitek out to solve a particular pain point for customers: forgotten passwords to its online site. By far the most common reason visitors came to the cable company’s site was to pay a bill, and the call center was inundated with calls from customers who could not recall their passwords. Mitek’s solution allows customers to snap a picture of a bill within the billing system. There’s no need to enter a password or any other credentials.
The testing period that ended today began about two months ago, Mitek Chief Marketing Officer Scott Carter told Bank Innovation. The test was not about the software, which has been proven by US Bank and others, but rather about integrating with the biller’s system.
Fraud is essentially a nonfactor in mobile bill pay, but Carter said that Mitek has seen “extremely low” fraud rates across all its imaging solutions, including RDC.
Carter also said that advances in HTML 5 have allowed mobile web browsers to access the camera, which means customers can be onboarded through imaging of personal documents without needing to download an app first.
Mitek’s imaging technology is erasing friction in many areas of banking, and now the cable bill. This easier payment process might even help make cable companies less hated.
Learn more about what’s next in banking at Bank Innovation 2014 on March 3-4 in Seattle. Request an invitation here.