Mitek Systems, Inc., a provider of mobile-imaging applications using smartphone cameras for check deposits, bill payments and ACH enrollments, today announced an innovative application for the financial services industry that enables consumers to switch bank credit card accounts as simply as “Point, Shoot and Transfer.”

Mitek Mobile Balance Transfer, a new, easy, attractive and cost-effective way for a bank to acquire new credit card customers, will be demonstrated for the first time on Sept. 21 to attendees at the FinovateFall 2011 conference in New York.

Mobile Balance Transfer joins the rapidly growing family of mobile-banking applications for banks, credit unions, brokerages and payment-management providers that are all rooted in the company’s patented mobile image-capture and data-extraction capabilities.  Along with Mobile Deposit, Mobile Photo Bill Pay and Mobile ACH Enrollment, the newest Mitek app gives financial institutions a powerful platform of customer-acquisition and -retention tools.

The mobile application enables a bank’s customer to use a smartphone camera to take a picture of a competitor’s credit card payment coupon.  The customer transmits the information to the bank, which then can offer the customer a better interest rate to incent the customer to open a new credit card account and transfer an existing balance.

For banks, Mobile Balance Transfer broadens the reach of traditional balance-transfer-marketing programs, enabling the bank to interact with the customer in real time.  By accepting the bank’s offer, the consumer simply transfers his or her outstanding credit card balance to a new credit card account offering a more attractive rate, saving the customer time and money.

“The better banks understand the power of the digital-scanning devices in consumers’ hands, the more they want to add applications that create more intimate relationships with their customers that are based on convenience and trust,” said Mitek President and CEO James B. DeBello.

“Mobile Balance Transfer is our latest product that does just that,” he said.  “We’re responding to the banks’ requests for greater functionality and simplicity for users. The breadth of capabilities found in our imaging services, and now on the devices themselves, further position Mitek as the ‘Gold Standard’ in mobile banking.”

“We’re seeing financial institutions starting to formulate their mobile-imaging strategies in interesting ways,” DeBello said.  “It’s now clear that every bank or credit union needs one because the huge growth in smartphones and tablets dictate that you either have a mobile-imaging strategy or you’ll be woefully behind your competition.”

All of the Mitek apps for financial institutions comport with U.S. banking regulations for accuracy and security, and all are compatible with leading devices and wireless operating systems, including iPhone, BlackBerry and Android.

Mitek also recently launched its Mobile Imaging Cloud™ Service, which provides mobile application developers and businesses with a fast, cost-effective way to create smartphone and tablet apps that use the camera as an input method for a wide variety of tasks, eliminating the need to keystroke data from documents.  DeBello said the company believes the Mobile Imaging Cloud service will be attractive to a number of vertical industries, especially insurance and healthcare.

Mitek’s extractive-imaging technology works with both paper and non-paper documents, including drivers’ licenses, gift cards, receipts, invoices, tax documents and many others.

How Mobile Balance Transfer from Mitek works

Knowing that most of their retail customers have credit card accounts with competing banks, financial institutions can add Mobile Balance Transfer to their arrays of mobile-banking apps available to customers.  When consumers access their mobile-banking accounts, they see an icon for an app that offers them a better credit card rate.

Upon opening the app during a mobile-banking session, consumers are prompted to snap photos of credit card coupons from their current issuers.  Mobile Balance Transfer accurately and securely converts the photographed information into data files that electronic banking systems can use to extend a more competitive offer to the consumer, including interest rates, terms and conditions.

Consumers can accept the offers with a single touch of their device keypads, and the banks will automatically transfer the balances and establish new accounts.  No paperwork, no junk mail, no fuss.

Consumers gain reduced costs on their credit card accounts and the banks offering Mobile Balance Transfer gain new credit card customers more cost-effectively than previous balance-transfer methods.

Source: PR Newswire