Mitek released version 2.0 of its mobile photo bill pay solution yesterday. The 2.0 update includes several feature enhancements and is expected to go live for the two clients currently using the solution, US Bank and BBVA Compass, very soon, according to Jim DeBello, CEO of Mitek.

The primary enhancement of the product is MiSnap, a click-free way method taking photos of bills. The user simply steadies the camera with the bill in the viewfinder, and the software takes 30 images a second and chooses the best one.

The software performs more than 1,000 calculations – determining the edges, of images, finding the corners, checking the clarity of text, checking the light level, etc. – in order to determine the fitness of an image.

US Bank’s Chris Peper, VP of the mobile channel, recently indicated that only 1 in 10 mobile billpay attempts work perfectly out of the gate, 6 in 10 require a small amount of manual input, and the other 3 out of 10 require more extensive manual correction.

The MiSnap technology may also be applied to RDC solutions, but for now is limited to photo bill pay.

The software refresh also offers analytics and business intelligence tools for financial institutions to receive data on device type, operating system, number of photo attempts, location (if the user has opted into geolocation services) and much more.

“This information is crucial for banks to understand customer behavior in the mobile channel,” DeBello told Bank innovation. “We’re seeing a broader adoption of the camera” for data input.

For example, San Diego County Credit Union recently implemented a Mitek solution to allow users to transfer credit card balances using the smartphone camera.

While smartphone cameras have reached a level beyond which increases in resolution have little impact, “the processing capabilities of the smartphone continue to advance to push the boundaries of what’s possible on these devices,” said Mike Strange, Mitek’s CTO.