Not long ago we reported on Mitek’s Mobile Photo Bill Pay solution, which allows users to pay bills using their smartphone cameras. Malauzai, a provider of mobile banking applications to financial institutions, has put this solution into action as a feature call PicturePay on iOS and Android phones. Malauzai currently offers it to the more than 60 community banks and credit unions in its network. An iPad-specific app is coming soon.

Malauzai (the name means “Little Monkey” in Cantonese) chief product officer Robb Gaynor said Malauzai’s customer base encompasses financial institutions with total assets of “a couple hundred million to a couple billion” dollars.

Malauzai teamed up with the Allied Payment Network to develop PicturePay. It works like this: A user takes a picture of a bill, enters the amount to pay, and clicks “submit.” PicturePay does populate and store biller profiles for future use, which is a capability of the Mitek product PicturePay is built on. But the focus is strongly on the act of taking pictures rather than using stored biller profiles.

We asked Gaynor why.

“The emphasis of mobile is on taking pictures,” he said, “not just using the online banking we set up.”

“Malauzai wants to offer a perfect end-user experience. Mitek is not perfect, but PicturePay is,” Gaynor added. The feature was tested with 13,000 customers of First Financial Bank, which is based in Abilene, Texas, and has $4.3 billion in assets.

“We’re very focused on providing flexible branding,” Gaynor said. “Our white-labeled solutions are not generic, they’re highly flexible, and can be segmented down to the individual customer.”

Coolness is part of Malauzai’s brand promise to FIs, too.

“Smaller banks compete by offering better products,” he said.

Malauzai has a focus on ease-of-use, as well as on data and analysis, and offers its expertise to its participating institutions. “We listen to our data,” Gaynor said. Of its community banking customers, 20 to 25% use online bill pay — and that number is growing. This bodes well for PicturePay adoption.

“Mobile can offer a superior experience to online,” he said. “We like to say that mobile apps are pointier. They offer a more focused experience.”

NOTE: This story has been updated to correct Gaynor’s title and to clarify features of Malauzai’s product.